


The Long Dusk

by beingheretoo



Series: The Long Dusk [1]
Category: Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal Series - J.M. Lee, The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: A Season 2 of Sorts, Canon Continuation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 130,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25393519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beingheretoo/pseuds/beingheretoo
Summary: It seemed obvious what to do next: bring the shard to the castle and heal the Crystal. But after a half-improvised ritual, new visions challenge this obvious path and open new, more complicated routes to the healing of Thra, and raise questions about whathealingreally means.Part 1.1: Low Rays of SunlightMuch scuttling. Reassembling body parts. A long to-do list. Not a trick. A creature of Thra. An interrupted meeting. Missing persons. A progression of light.POVs: Tavra, Gurjin, Brea, Naia, Kylan, Mera, Rian, Deet
Relationships: Amri/Naia (Dark Crystal), Brea/Kylan (Dark Crystal), Deet/Rian (Dark Crystal), Onica/Tavra (Dark Crystal)
Series: The Long Dusk [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039537
Comments: 58
Kudos: 29





	1. (0.0) Table of Contents

**Author's Note:**

> This is meant to be a straight continuation fic, following the TV canon, but giving equal weight to the TV and book characters. I tried to integrate the backgrounds of the latter as well as I could into the TV canon. There’s a little _Creation Myths_ thrown in as well for good measure, as well as some inspiration from _The World of the Dark Crystal_ , and of course, the movie.
> 
> I tagged characters who have at least four POV sections throughout the story, but plenty of others appear and/or have a POV or two. I posted eventual couples for people who like to know those things in advance, but while the relationship subplots are part of the story, they're not the main focus.
> 
> I rated this Teen and Up, but levels of violence, etc. are not that much different than in the show. Maybe even less violent. It’s a scary show :|
> 
> This whole thing is written already, so it’s just a matter of posting it. I hope to put up a chapter a week.

**_Table of Contents_ **

Part 1.1: Low Rays of Sunlight  
_Much scuttling. Reassembling body parts. A long to-do list. Not a trick. A creature of Thra. An interrupted meeting. Missing persons. A progression of light._  
POVs: Tavra, Gurjin, Brea, Naia, Kylan, Mera, Rian, Deet

Part 1.2: An Uncertain Ritual  
_Clamor in the desert. The past, the future, and the now. Moonlight on a tomb. A reunion. Much needed sleep, disturbed. Conspiracy in the nursery._  
POVs: Hup, Onica, Seladon, Tavra, Aughra, skekTek

Part 1.3: And Where Are You Going?  
_Ten irritable women. A contested plan. A normal person. Very confused about treason. A deal for ninety-eight._  
POVs: Brea, Rian, Deet, Seladon, skekSa

Part 1.4: The Ritual of Departure  
_An unalphabetized spice rack. Glowering at a Grottan. Paths, murky and clear. Finding ley lines. An unexpected route._  
POVs: Kylan, Gurjin, Brea, Naia, skekUng

Part 2.1: The Crystal Sings  
_Dispute over a chair. The wrong hum. Coming home. Escape on the river. Constantly forging ahead. Talking around a vow_.  
POVs: Deet, Rian, Deet, Gurjin, Amri, Aughra

Part 2.2: A Light on the Sea  
_Actual interesting things. Adjusting the tuning. Just the memory of a song. Things you can't hear. A lesson in tent etiquette._  
POVs: Brea, Kylan, Brea, Kylan, Onica

Part 2.3: Blight & Waste  
_An alliance proposed. A kind of existential dread. A better way. Much stabbing. Old friends. The merits of mathematics. A necessary part of the scientific process._  
POVs: Deet, Amri, Vow-Guy, Naia, Deet, Kylan, skekTek

Part 3.1 Through the Mists  
_A relaxing morning. Making a connection. The table, aflame. Mineral hunting. A normal conversation. Changing the dynamic._  
POVs: Seladon, Tavra, Onica, Naia, Rian, Seladon

Part 3.2 Lost in the Memories of a Thousand Gelfling  
_Eavesdropping. Songs of the past. An exchange in the desert. Two feet on solid ground. Visibility. An urRu, unsettled. Gelfling wizardry. Eavesdropping, again._  
POVs: skekSa, Amri, Seethi, Rian, Kylan, urSu, Brea, Seladon

Part 3.3 Dark Water and Starless Skies  
_A dreamfast, with only minor injuries. The advice of loved ones. Wrangling the Elders. Safe forever. A disregard for circumspect methods._  
POVs: Onica, Naia, Rian, Deet, skekSo

Part 4.1 The Wise Creatures of Thra  
_Showdown on the Plains. Finding another way. A normal family breakfast. The dark part of wisdom. The good counsel of trees._  
POVs: Seladon, Kylan, Gurjin, skekSa, Raunip

Part 4.2 How It Should Be  
_A sisterly reunion. An untold number of horror monsters. Corrected vision. A specific grief. Unavoidable grotesquery._  
POVs: Brea, Gurjin, Tavra, Deet, Aughra

Part 4.3 Each Light Doubled  
_Room for hope. The past and the now. A bridge between worlds. An unexpected prophecy. The coolness of riverwater._  
POVs: Onica, Kylan, Raunip, Brea, skekSa

Part 5.0 A Night Lit Only By Stars  
_Permission to stay. Saying good-bye. A horrible thing in common. Unnecessary trappings. Six maudras and one man. Encounters on grid block A-19. Of Thra and of the stars._  
POVs: Tavra, Naia, Amri, Seladon, Rian, Deet, Aughra


	2. (1.1) Low Rays of Sunlight

Part 1.1: Low Rays of Sunlight  
_Much scuttling. Reassembling body parts. A long to-do list. Not a trick. A creature of Thra. An interrupted meeting. Missing persons. A progression of light._  
POVs: Tavra, Gurjin, Brea, Naia, Kylan, Mera, Rian, Deet

******

The long dusk began as the Great Sun fell below the horizon, leaving the two others, the Rose and the Dying, to cast long shadows from the Castle of the Crystal towards the Dark Wood. The low light scattered across the nettles and leaves of the forest floor, and fell upon a solitary creature scuttling on eight legs, up and down tree roots, past weeds with tiny, dried-out blossoms, through ditches and gullies, following a track roughly paralleling an old dirt road. 

Earlier, the creature had been reeling, fleeing in every direction at once, as it tried to process the countless changes it had accumulated over the previous days. A mind, flashes of silver and the sea and the moon, the powerlessness of death, once, but also more than once, and grief and regret. Earlier. But now, its turmoil had settled, and it scuttled with purpose towards its destination. 

In the clearing, the light of the long dusk fell upon old stones, old homes that had once been teeming with life but now stood empty. The road, however, was not empty, nor was the town center with its hearth, nor the woods surrounding town, nor the green spaces between the ruined homes. The creature scuttled past a series of off-white canopies that sheltered the wounded, past the palace, whose queen now lay in a tomb of stone, past the fires being lit in preparation for the oncoming night. 

A flash of silver, then another, and the creature abruptly changed course to avoid them both. Finally, past the center of town, it stumbled upon a small clearing where the fading light fell upon a jewel-colored tent. 

The creature hurried toward the flap, but before it could arrive, a red-haired woman stepped out. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, bending down and reaching her hand towards it. The creature scuttled up onto her shoulder as the two walked together into the shade of the tent. The flash of silver within the creature smiled. _Of course you have._

******

The two remaining Suns sank further down the sky, and the light, shades of pink and red-violet, fell weakly upon two men, one shivering in a sleeveless undershirt and trying not to stare at the blood slowly oozing down from his upper arm, the other examining the wound.

The slice from a Skeksis sword had bled through the bandage, but no major artery had been cut, and the healing process would be simple. Hand to the wounded arm, like a dreamfast, but not quite. And there, the severed lines in the web of veins and arteries appeared in the healer’s mind, and it was only a matter of visualizing them whole again. A minute passed, and, piece by piece, the jagged edges of the veins and arteries grew and accumulated until they were whole again. Then bits of ballast tissue, and then the skin. No scab, no scar.

“I’d heard of healers in the south who could do such a thing,” said the newly-healed Stonewood soldier, “but it’s a wonder to see.”

“Yeah, well, this one wasn’t so bad,” said the other man. He handed the Stonewood his coat and stood up and stretched.

“Gurjin, we need you over here.” His mother and sister were crouched beside a Vapran castle guard whose left leg bent at an odd angle. He knew the guard fairly well; they had trained together regularly and worked shifts together on occasion. 

Gurjin’s first thought was to sneak away. He had been trying very hard to ignore the fact that of all the castle guards, the people with whom he had spent every day of his life for the last five trine, all but four had been drained by the Skeksis. All but four, including himself and Rian, and even he had been drained a little. Too much horror to process, best just to bury it and move on.

“The bone needs to be set before we can heal the leg,” said his mother, kneeling on the grass with her walking stick beside her. “We need someone to hold her steady.” 

Gurjin sighed. Only four left, and one of them was hurt. _I have to help her_ , he thought. _Even if it dredges up the past a little bit._

“Hey, Kari,” he said as he kneeled behind the guard and propped her up, “I haven’t seen you since, you know, everything.” 

“Since I was guarding the Scientist's laboratory with you locked up inside it you mean.”

“Yeah, well, old news,” he replied. “We’re all here now.”

“Still, I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have done something.”

“Then you’d just be dead, like everyone else,” he said. “I’m glad you’re not dead.” 

Kari sighed and closed her eyes, but whether she was trying to block out the pain of her leg or block out the faces of all those they had lost, Gurjin couldn’t tell.

“All right,” Gurjin’s mother began. “This is going to hurt. But once the bone is set we can mend it and you’ll be walking again before the Rose Sun sets.”

“I’m ready,” said Kari. Gurjin tightened his grip on her upper arms while Naia made a quick movement down by her feet, and half a second and one quick scream of pain later, the bone was set. Gurjin picked up a rag and wiped the sweat from Kari’s face. 

“Do you want to mend the bone or handle the bruising?” his mother asked Naia. 

“You’re tired. I’ll do the bone.” And with that they set to work. 

“You’re not fazed by this,” he said to Kari as she watched the purple color of her leg slowly fade into its normal tone. “The Stonewood soldier I just healed was slightly baffled.” 

“I’m used to other Drenchen at the castle. You can do this too, right? I remember you wiping some scrapes away for your friends on occasion.”

“Just minor injuries,” he replied. “I don’t have the training that my mom and sister have.” 

“It’s amazing, Drenchen healing magic.” 

“It’s not magic, really. I think it’s probably something anyone can do, if they’re taught how.” His own training had been cut short when he had left for the castle, although knowing that he’d just be sent away from home one day, he had never put as much effort into it as Naia. Which, in retrospect, made very little sense, since healing was clearly a skill that would be useful for a soldier.

Down by Kari’s feet, Naia broke the healing trance. “The bone’s healed,” she said. “Once my mother’s done with the bruising you should be able to stand on it.” Kari was about to speak when a whirl of silver braids came trampling into the tent.

“Gurjin, have you seen Rian? I’ve been looking for him everywhere, and Deet too, you know obviously she was in a rather unusual state at the end of the battle, so I thought it’d be a good idea to check in with her, but I can’t find either of them anywhere.”

“Your Highness,” said Kari, with deference. Brea looked over her shoulder, before slowing down for a minute to register the scene before her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have just come barging over here.” 

Gurjin's mother grabbed her walking stick and pulled herself up. “You must be very proud, Your Highness,” she said to Brea, “that a warrior of your clan so bravely put her life on the line in the battle against the Skeksis. Almost lost a leg in the whole nasty business as well.”

“Oh yes,” said Brea, picking up on the cue. “If it weren’t for the experienced fighters among us, we never would have made it out alive. You honor the Vapra clan with your service.” Gurjin caught Naia’s eye and smiled. Mom was the best.

“All right, Gurjin,” his mother said. “We’re done here. Naia and I can finish up the last few bumps and bruises. Go look for your friends.”

Gurjin was fairly certain that Rian and Deet would turn up, and maybe even didn’t want to be interrupted wherever they were, but he had already lost too many friends to count, and he certainly wasn’t going to lose two more. He stood up, dusted himself off, and followed Brea out of the tent and into the fading evening light.

******

In the low light of the Rose Sun, Brea’s hair glowed a weary pink as she and Gurjin wandered along a dirt road leading towards the makeshift camps of the various clans. Her mind raced through the million things that there were to do now that the battle was over and the shard discovered: figuring out how to heal the Crystal of Truth, finding a new home for the Grottan, deciding whether to evacuate the Dark Wood and the Plains. Spending half the afternoon searching for two disappeared friends had not been on her list, but her worry for them had grown and grown the longer she couldn’t find them, and it now took priority over everything else.

“That was a good save back there in the tent,” Gurjin said, breaking her chain of anxious thoughts. “You came across as very regal.”

“Thanks to your mother,” she replied. “I really need to get better at being a princess. It’s just when I get fixated on something I forget all about, I don’t know, decorum and all that. People expect decorum from a princess, right?” 

“Don’t look at me, I dodged all that nonsense by being born a boy.” He paused, glancing back briefly at the tents where his mother and sister still worked. “And maybe the Drenchen don’t care so much about decorum anyway. Just straightforwardness.”

“That sounds fantastic, actually,” Brea said, absent-mindedly picking a withered leaf off of her dress and then watching it fall gently to the ground. “Can I abdicate my position and join your family instead?”

“Is that a proposal?” Gurjin asked with a teasing grin.

“Oh, heavens, no,” replied Brea swiftly. “I mean, you’re a lovely person, and I’m sure if we really wanted to, we could make it work, but I’d rather….” Her voice trailed off as her conversational partner doubled over in a fit of laughter.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Yeah, let’s not get married and just try to find Rian instead.”

“And Deet,” said Brea, a corner of her mind still thinking about the withered leaf. She added _solve the blight_ to her mental to-do list. 

“Right,” said Gurjin. “So where have you looked?”

“Everywhere in town, and I asked around the various camps. Nothing.”

“Have you looked from, you know, up?” He gestured vaguely at the sky.

“Not yet. I’d have to get up higher than we did in the battle to really see anything at a distance. I could climb a tree and jump, I suppose,” she said, eyeing a particularly imperious evergreen. “I’ve never climbed a tree before.”

Gurjin silently walked a little way down road, putting a short distance between himself and Brea. The rose-colored twilight framed him from behind. 

“All right then,” he said. “Come at me.” 

Brea squinted into the sunlight. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Just run as fast as you can, right at me. I’ll throw you.”

It was Brea’s turn to laugh. “I’m sorry, what?” she repeated.

“We did this all the time at the castle. Boys throwing girls into the air so they can get good lift. It’s how I met Mira, actually. We were partners on the first day of training. We were fifteen.” He grew quiet, and Brea had enough presence of mind to be quiet for a moment in sympathy. _We all have so many people to mourn_ , she thought. _Where does that go on the to-do list?_

She decided to figure out where to place mourning on the list at a later date. Time to focus on the task at hand. “All right,” she said to Gurjin. “Let’s do it then. Get ready.” 

Brea closed her eyes and barreled into the low rays of evening light. And then, suddenly, there was no ground beneath her and she was sailing past the treetops. She spread out her wings and, with a steady stream of flutters, pulled herself a little higher into the sky. 

She saw the castle and the two low suns behind it, then lowered her eyes to the green-black forest beneath her. No signs of movement beyond the town, nor on the roads, nor in the gaps between the trees as the forest stretched, green-black, towards the horizon. 

Only not all of the forest was green-black. A steady line of dry-bones brown and gray worked its way through the breathing verdancy of the great forest. Perhaps the remnants of a forest fire? More blight? But the strip was too thin, too controlled, beginning at the edge of town and continuing in a line. She noted the place where the gray line met the town and slowly lowered herself to the ground.

“Well?” asked Gurjin.

“I think I found Deet,” she said.

******

Low rose-colored rays of sunlight filtered through the forest and cast mottled shadows onto the rocks lining the dirt road leading away from town. Naia squinted as she passed through the bars of sunlight, turned, and then continued on past the scattered tents of the hundreds of Gelfling camped out in the woods. Her mind was focused on her own tent, and a meal, and sleep. Less than a seven of Gelfling had needed serious healing, but still, she was exhausted. She felt herself drooping along with the rays of the late-afternoon suns.

She was so focused on thoughts of rest that she failed to notice the movement of a tent flap amongst the trees off to the side of the road, and the sound of a voice whispering her name.

“Naia,” the voice called again, more insistently. This time Naia looked up. A Sifan woman, the apprentice to an elder, if Naia remembered correctly, stood holding up the tent flap with one hand, standing half inside, half out.

“Yes?” said Naia cautiously. She had never met this woman before. “How do you know who I am?”

“You’re Maudra Laesid’s daughter.”

“True.” That was plausible at least.

“And you’re a healer?”

“Yes.” After the battle that would be common knowledge.

“And your friend, the Spriton, he’s a dream-stitcher, right?”

With this, Naia’s alarm bells triggered. She had been wary enough when it had just concerned herself, but she spared no extra caution for potential threats to her family and friends. “How do you know that? Who are you?”

The Sifan woman emerged fully from the tent, although in the low light her face was still half-shadowed. “My name is Onica. I’m a soothsayer.”

“Is that how you know about me and Kylan? You used far-dreaming to spy on us?”

Onica did not reply right away, instead pressing her lips together in thought. “Tavra told me about you,” she said at last. “She said she traveled with you to the castle.”

“Tavra’s dead,” replied Naia. “There’s no way she could have told you anything about anyone. Try again.”

“I know it sounds strange, but you have to believe me. She told me that she met you, and Kylan, and Rian in a Podling tavern. You two fought, but then everyone dreamfasted with Rian and found out what the Skeksis were up to. You let Rian go, and then you and Tavra headed toward the castle, and…”

“Enough,” interrupted Naia in a voice so like her mother’s that she surprised herself. “What kind of trick is this? Did you find someone else who was at the tavern that night? Were you there yourself hiding in the shadows? What do you want with…” 

Naia trailed off as a long, spindly arm emerged from behind Onica’s shoulder, then another, then another, until an entire Arathim Threader appeared and began attaching itself to Onica’s face. Naia instinctively reached into her belt and drew out her dagger. She was weighing whether to strike first or keep talking when the joined Threader-Sifa spoke.

“Naia, please listen.” The voice was deep and soft and Naia recognized it at once. 

“This is sick,” Naia said, lowering her dagger but not sheathing it. “It’s a sick joke.”

“Naia, it’s not a joke. It’s me,” said the voice. The Sifan’s face was blank and her eyes failed to move for an unnerving amount of time as Tavra’s voice came out of her mouth. “I know you have no reason to help me. I talked down to you, I insulted you. When I get fixated on something, I can become single-minded about achieving it, and I had known that murdered soldier since she was a girl. I had a mission, and it was simple, and it was aligned with my grief, and when you complicated that mission I took it out on you. But I need your help now, please.” 

Naia sheathed her dagger. If this was a trick, it was so convoluted that she couldn’t see through it, so she might as well let it unfold further. “All right,” she said. “You’re Tavra. And you’re... in a spider now. Explain to me how you are in a spider.”

“The Skeksis captured me in the castle and bound me to the Arathim. When the Arathim joined our cause, they freed me from their control, but my mind remained merged with this Threader. It was too late to pull us apart again. When my Gelfling body died, the Threader left, and it took me with it.”

Naia looked at the red-haired woman in the evening light. What she said—what the spider had said through her mouth—made sense in a way.

“Say that I believe you," said Naia. "What do you want my help with?” 

“I need to talk to my sisters.”

Naia stood, arms folded. “So, you want me to go get them for you, or…” 

“No,” said Tavra. “I… the only way I can speak is to bond myself to another like this.” 

“You are not attaching yourself to my face.”

“You see how skeptically you have reacted to Onica telling you about what’s happened to me? Now imagine she’s telling you all of this about your sister.”

"I’d certainly be very upset,” replied Naia. But her mind went to her own sisters at home, and her sympathy grew. "So what do you want me to do?”

“Onica says she can create an entrance to dreamspace. A place where we can all meet in our minds, like in a dreamfast, but instead of memories we can see each other and talk to each other. And if they can see me in my old body, even if it’s just in dreamspace, maybe it will be easier for them to listen.” 

Tavra-spider-Onica’s eyes shifted, and the Sifan woman’s voice returned. “I said I _think_ I can bring us into dreamspace. But I need help. I need a dream-healer. And I need a dream-stitcher.”

Naia’s mind leapt again, and recalled a few days earlier when Aughra had done something similar to what Onica described. “I’ve been in dreamspace like that before. But Mother Aughra is the one who brought us there. Is it something Gelfling can do?”

“I don’t know if it will work,” said Onica. “But we have to at least try.” 

The voice switched back to Tavra’s. “And if it doesn’t work, then I’ll sneak up on one of my sisters when she's not looking and attach myself to her face and hope for the best.”

Naia laughed. Maybe it was a shame Tavra had died before she could have gotten to know her better. It seemed like maybe they would have been able to get along after all. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go find Kylan and meet you back here.”

“If he doesn’t want to help, we can always try something…”

“No,” replied Naia. “He’ll help. He always helps.” And with that she walked with the last light of the Rose Sun back toward the center of town.

******

Kylan had found what he was looking for almost immediately, but for the last few minutes he’d just stood there, staring at it. In the last rays of the Rose Sun, the white bone of the Hunter’s mask glowed a dusky pink verging on red. The skull mask had, at one point, been a creature of Thra, and so although the Hunter had crumbled into dust, it remained.

In all of the chaos, of Mother Aughra reappearing, of Deet exploding a Skeksis, of the discovery of the shard, no one else had given the mask a second thought. Why would they? The Hunter was dead; that was all that mattered. For Kylan, though, the sight of it had triggered a series of memories, newly connected them to each other, and in an instant put his entire past into perspective. There was only one person who could confirm these new realizations and, as he stood staring at the evening light on the mask, he tried to play through the necessary confrontation with her in his head.

A shadow fell upon the skull as a figure made its way between it and the Suns. “Are you just going to stare at it all day?” Naia asked.

Kylan didn’t look up, as his mind finished running through the various scenarios it had been working on. “No,” he said, finally, and he reached down and picked up the skull.

“What in Thra’s name are you going to do with that?” Naia asked in her worried posture, arms folded and perfectly still.

“I’m going to have a conversation with Maudra Mera,” he replied, turning away from the evening suns and back towards the woods.

Naia followed with a sigh. “Can you give me an answer that doesn’t skip seven steps?”

“It was him,” Kylan replied simply, neither slowing down nor explaining further. He trusted Naia to understand, and she did.

“What do you mean it was…” she trailed off as realization dawned on her. “Kylan, are you sure?” She quickened her pace to catch up to him.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“And you’re going to confront Mera about it right now?”

“I have to do it now while I’m still angry or I’ll never work up the courage.”

Naia smiled, pausing to move aside a low-hanging branch that he had almost walked into, his attention focused on the skull. “I forgot that your angry face is like a normal person’s regular face, with like, one extra tensed muscle.”

Kylan looked away from the mask and up at his friend for the first time since their conversation had begun. “Did you want me for something?” he asked.

Her smile faded and in the shadows of the forest she looked nervous, embarrassed almost. "It’s nothing,” she said.

“It’s something.”

“Just, there’s this Sifan woman and she wants to talk to us about the Vapran princess, Tavra.”

“Oh,” said Kylan, as he turned away from Naia and continued crunching over dead leaves as he led them through the darkening forest towards the Spriton camp. “Is it about how Tavra is a spider now?” _So that’s why Naia looks nervous_ , he thought. She didn’t like things that were out of the ordinary.

“You know about that?” she replied, before shaking her head. “Of course you do.”

“I was there when she died. I suspected something at the time but I wasn’t sure.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know," he replied. "The Threader just kind of scampered off into the woods and I figured she didn’t want to be bothered. What do they want us for?”

“Onica said something about opening an entrance into dreamspace like Mother Aughra did that one time.”

“So Tavra can talk to her sisters and it won’t be as weird as if she had to attach herself to their faces. That makes sense.”

Naia shook her head. “Well, I’m glad this all makes sense to you.” 

“It’ll make sense to you too,” he said warmly. “Don’t worry too much about it.” 

They stopped at the edge of a clearing filled with tents and Spriton soldiers tending scattered campfires. Towering above the field as tall as the trees was a perimeter of landstriders, grazing peacefully in the evening light. Kylan focused on Maudra Mera’s tent and let his mind start running through possible scenarios again. But before he could get too lost in his thoughts, Naia spoke up. 

“You should go now,” she said. “While you’re still angry.”

Kylan smiled. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be quick, and then we can go do that spider thing.”

Naia leaned against a tree and resumed her worried pose, arms folded across her chest. “I’ll be right here,” she said. “And no matter what she says to you, or what you say to her, don’t forget that I’ve got your back.”

“I never would,” he said, and, as the late afternoon light deepened into shades of blue evening, he walked off towards the tent.

******

Mera stood at a table with three members of her council, pouring over a map of the Skarith Land from the edge of the forest down to the swamp. Now that the conflict with the Skeksis had come to a head, they would have to decide which settlements could be defended and which were no longer safe, and, as much as she was loathe to take the option, whether or not they would have to give up on the Plains entirely and seek refuge with Laesid in Sog.

She and her advisors had been talking in circles for hours, and she was already having trouble focusing when she heard voices coming from outside the tent. There was a flurry of action as the tent flap flew open and Kylan entered, followed by one of the guards.

“I apologize, Maudra,” said the guard. “I told him you were in a meeting, but…” 

Kylan ignored the guard, stepped up to the table where Mera stood with the council, and gently placed the Hunter’s mask on the table in front of her. In an even, low voice, he asked, simply, “Did you know?”

Mera froze for half an instant, looking down at the skull, then raised her eyes past Kylan to the guard. “It’s fine,” she said, waving her off. She then turned to the council. “You should all go. We’re done for today, anyway.” She watched them exit the tent and then sighed and glanced at Kylan, before turning to remove her cloak.

“You shouldn’t have interrupted like that,” she said, folding the cloak into a neat square. “I know we’ve all had a very long day and…”

“Answer the question. Did you know?”

She knew him well enough to know he was angry, even though his voice was quiet and calm as always. She finished folding the cloak, placed it on top of her cot and then turned around to face him.

“Did I know _what_ , Kylan? Please be more specific. I cannot simply guess what you’ve been thinking.”

He seemed to lean into his anger, but just enough to hold her gaze, and his voice remained calm as he replied. 

“When I was a small child, and you found me, alone in my home, the walls and the floor and the ceiling splattered with blood, and I told you that a monster made of bones broke down the door in the middle of the night and killed my parents, and when you dreamfasted with me and saw every last detail that I had seen, and then looked me in the eyes and told me it was only a wild animal, and then spent the rest of my childhood lying to me about my own memories, and punishing me if I ever talked about the monster that you and I both saw, did you know, the entire time, that it was a Skeksis?”

Mera stared at him, hands resting gently on the table between them, refusing to look down at the skull that still lay there. 

"There were rumors,” she replied at last. “The peasants settled on the outskirts of the forest had rumors of a terrible creature made of bones that killed any living thing it came across.”

"I know there were rumors,” he replied. “I’m asking how much you knew.”

“There were other rumors as well, from the Stonewood and the northern clans of a Skeksis known as the Hunter.”

“Rumors?”

“Knowledge, I suppose. In northern books and scrolls he appears in the lists of Skeksis.” 

“So you knew.”

“I knew, Kylan,” she replied, looking down at the skull again. It sat on the map, right atop the southern stretch of the Black River. _Of course I knew._

“You spent my whole life making me doubt my own memories. How could you?” She read a slight shift in him from anger to disappointment. 

“When will you realize that the issue was bigger than you?” she began. “I knew that it was a Skeksis who killed your parents. I also knew that the Skeksis tithed us and encouraged rivalry among the clans in order to keep us scrambling at each other’s throats. But there was nothing to be done. They were the Lords and that was a truth and certainty to our people, and if you take certainty away from people and make them question their truth, you take away their security, and they become agitated. It is my job to keep everyone from becoming agitated.”

“But it was a lie,” he said. “And now so many others have died.”

“I did what needed to be done.” She tried to hold back her temper, but she knew if he kept pushing he would get under her skin. Honestly, it was so simple, why did he refuse to understand the position that she was in?

“You made me doubt my own mind,” he said. His gaze had been on the skull mask between them, but he shifted his eyes until they held hers. “I spent my whole life thinking that there was something wrong with me.”

 _How hard is this to understand?_ “Kylan, it was _worth_ it.”

Mera recoiled a little at her own words. It was true, but that didn’t mean that it had needed to be said, at least not so bluntly. She opened her mouth to apologize but he spoke first.

“Maudra Mera, you took me in, and kept me fed and clothed. You taught me to read and to write and to dream-stitch. And I will always be grateful for all of those things.” He paused, glancing down one last time at the mask and the map. “But I’m not coming home.” And with that, he turned and walked away from the table, from the skull mask, from her.

Mera was silent, unable to reply, not because of the words themselves, but because of the gentle decisiveness with which they had been delivered. It was the same as his mother’s all those years ago, when she had come to register a new homestead with her foreign husband, and Mera had tried to talk her out of it.

“Kylan,” she managed to get out before he exited the tent. He turned back to look at her. “You’ll be going to Great Smerth then?”

“Probably. Maybe.”

“Wherever you go, try to send word on occasion. These are worrying times.”

He smiled his calm smile, the same as his mother’s, and exited into the blue twilight.

******

Rian came to the end of the line of dead trees as the Rose Sun dropped behind the horizon, the thin red-violet light of the Dying Sun mingling with the bright white light of the First Sister. Soon the Dying Sun too would sink behind the horizon, and the long dusk would end in nightfall. Maybe here, at the end of the line of dead trees, Deet had finally stopped running. And maybe she would finally listen, before night fell, and the forest plunged into darkness, when all sorts of creatures would wake up and try to eat him.

“Deet?” he tried, for the hundredth time, his voice creaking. “Are you there? Please?”

No response. Endless strands of withered vines had laced through the tree trunks before him, fencing him out from the strip of bone-dry forest in which Deet remained, alone. Well, he wouldn’t give up, and if he got eaten by a nocturnal forest creature, so be it.

“Deet,” he cried again. “I just want to talk.”

Then, out of the corner of his eye, a brown-green blur dropped down from the sky with a thud, followed in rapid succession by flailing streak of silver crashing into the earth. Rian jumped back and drew his sword, beginning to regret his earlier resolve to be eaten by a nocturnal forest creature. Then his mind finished processing what he had seen and sheathed his sword with a sigh. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Nice to see you too, brother,” said Gurjin. “As for your question, I was sitting comfortably in the camp, looking forward to a nice hot meal by the fire at the end of a long day of attempting to overthrow the social order, and then I thought to myself, ‘No. You know what would be better? Wandering around in the dark through an endless forest filled with venomous creatures and large predators…’”

“We were worried about you, Rian,” Brea interrupted, breathlessly from the ground where she had landed in a bit of a sprawl. “Although if we are taking time to lodge complaints, I also would have preferred not to carry a person almost twice my size through the air for half a league after everything else that happened today.”

Rian sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run off without telling anyone. But after the battle, after Deet killed skekLach, I saw her, walking away, and she was… not okay.”

“It’s the Darkening, isn’t it?” said Brea. “I saw the line of blighted forest from the sky and you and Deet were missing and I knew it had to be connected, so I thought about how Deet absorbed so much of the Darkening, and how in the battle she was able to externalize it in order to destroy skekLach, and I thought what if she had somehow lost control and was now just sort of radiating Darkening, exterminating all of the forest vegetation around her as she passed?”

Rian blinked, his exhausted brain processing Brea’s words with a noticeable lag. 

“Right,” said Gurjin. “The line of dead trees was weird. So we flew here.”

“Did you see her from above?”

Brea stood up, examining a hole in the knee of her leggings. “No, I didn’t see anything moving around in there. But where the line of blight stops there’s a kind of rocky outcropping. I think perhaps she found a cave.”

Rian felt exhausted. “If she’s in there, she won’t answer me. I followed her the whole way here and she never answered me.”

“She has to be here somewhere. The trail ends here,” said Brea, trying to peek through the vines.

"Which means she just doesn’t want to talk to me,” said Rian. The weight of the long day finally fell upon him and he sank as low as the final rays of the Dying Sun, streaking red-violet light on his face.

“Hello Deet? This is Gurjin? From, like, hanging out in the desert that one time? Brea’s here too, you two were taken prisoner by the Skeksis together? Anyway, we just want to talk for a little bit, are you interested?”

More silence.

"See, Rian?” said Gurjin, sinking down to the ground next to him. “It’s not just you. She doesn’t want to talk to any of us. So don’t act so gloomy.”

Rian leaned against his friend and laughed quietly, mostly from exhaustion. “I just want to tell her to wait. That we’ll come up with a plan, that we’ll fix this. Somehow. I just want to make sure she doesn’t go away.”

“Of course we’ll come up with a plan,” said Brea. “We have the shard now, and an army of giant spiders. Surely we can get into the castle and heal the Crystal and Deet will be fine.”

"I’m sorry,” said Rian. “What do you mean heal the Crystal?”

“You mean you don’t know?” asked Brea. “Rian, how did you miss this? The Dual Glaive. It didn’t really matter about the sword part. Inside the handle was the missing shard of the Crystal of Truth.”

“What? How did it get there?”

"UrGoh and skekGra must have found somehow,” she said. “I have no idea how. It must be quite the story, and honestly it would have been much easier if they had just told us when we met them. But I suppose they wanted to make sure the Gelfling were all united before they revealed the shard, because we won’t be able stop the Skeksis and heal the Crystal without helping each other out. Yes, it makes sense, everything makes sense. We’ll make a plan, a plan for the Crystal, and a plan for Deet, and everything will be all right.” She tried peeking through the vines some more. 

Rian and Gurjin sat watching Brea, her hair reflecting the rising moonlight, the former still processing the new information he had just received, the latter with a look of moderate concern.

“Brea, are you all right?” asked Gurjin. “You’ve been rambling a lot, even for you.”

“Yes, I’m fine,” said Brea. “So for Deet, right now, why don’t we send her a note and let her know that we’re working on the problem and everything will be fine. I’ll tie the note to a rock and drop it down from above.” Somewhere in the darkness, things in the forest burbled. “Then we can head back to town before we get eaten by something,” Brea finished.

“How are we going to leave a note?” said Rian.

“I have my journal with me,” said Brea. “I can rip a page out from there.”

“Can Deet even read?” asked Gurjin.

“Yes, she can read. All Grottan learn to read as children, Deet told me,” said Brea, already fishing a pencil out from her pocket. “Rian, what should I write?”

“Tell her… tell her about the shard and that there’s hope. And tell her that we miss her and we just want her to be safe.”

"Deet,” said Brea as she wrote, “We miss you and we love you and we want you to be safe.” She was briefly interrupted by another forest burble. "I think that’s better, don’t you?”

The last rays of the Dying Sun disappeared from Rian’s face as the long dusk came to an end.

"Yes,” he replied. "It’s better.”

******

Darkness, darker than home, lining a small arch of fading evening light. She remembered crawling through the arch, barely clearing it on hands and knees, although the passage opened up into a cavern large enough for her to stand in. She had not bothered to stand, instead sinking down onto her side, cheek to the cold stone that reminded her of home, facing the the small opening of light through which she had come.

She watched the low beams of the Great Sun sink to nothing, then the low pink rays of the Rose Sun. The light of the Dying Sun failed to penetrate the trees and through her arch. Now she saw only the jumbled shadows of tree branches in the moonlight. A few weeks ago, she had never seen any of these lights before, and her mind detached from everything else and dedicated itself to observing the progression of afternoon, twilight, night. 

And so her mind filtered out the sounds of the forest, and the voices from the other side of the vines, and when a rock fell from the sky and rolled in front of her arch of light, it registered only as a source of yet another shadow in the moonlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that the official material for the show uses the spelling Dream Space but for some reason I really prefer dreamspace, so I went with that. I hope readers will indulge me.
> 
> On a similar note, I use some in-universe words like trine, but I prefer month to unum for some reason. There are a couple other words like that. I don’t know why. Sorry!


	3. (1.2) An Uncertain Ritual

Part 1.2: An Uncertain Ritual  
_Clamor in the desert. The past, the future, and the now. Moonlight on a tomb. A reunion. Much needed sleep, disturbed. Conspiracy in the nursery._  
POVs: Hup, Onica, Seladon, Tavra, Aughra, skekTek

******

Dusk had not yet begun and the low light of the Great Sun bounced off of the shifting crystal sands of the desert, filling the sky with a yellow glow that seemed to take all parts of the world out of reality and into a gentler, warmer realm. At the center of this gentler, warmer realm, stood the Circle of the Suns, and there, at the center of the Circle of the Suns, stood a Podling, yelling.

[Two-hundred-seventy-seven loud rock clangs], shouted Hup as he hurled a fist-sized rock at a rack of pots and pans. 

He shuffled over to the spot where the rock had shaken up the dust on the floor as it thudded to the ground, picked it up, walked back to where he started, wound up, and sent it hurling back at the pots and pans. 

[Two-hundred-seventy-eight loud rock clangs], he shouted.

“Mmm,” a groan and a long-clawed hand emerged from behind a curtain as skekGra poked his head out into the main room. “Can’t we just give him Lore and be done with it?”

“Lore’s…” Clang. “…task...” Clang. “…is…” Clang. “…com…” Clang. “...plete.” Clang. 

It had been several hours since the Archer’s dramatic sacrifice, and Hup had grown restless. On his return trip this time, he noticed two more rocks nestled by the front of the cave. Clang-clang-clang, he shot in rapid-fire. [Two-hundred-eighty-six loud rock clangs], he said.

“Argh,” groaned skekGra, with a spindly arm draped delicately over his brow. “Enough, Podling! Enough! Sit and be still until we can signal a Dousan ship to take you home.”

“Dousan no come. Fear this place.” You would think that after a thousand trine or so the urRu or the Skeksis or the urSkeks or whatever they were could have bothered to learn to speak Podling. "No come long time.” Clang. “Hup many rocks.” Clang-clang-clang. 

“He’s right. The Dousan are useless. We should just give in.”

“His…” Clang. “…friends…” Clang. “…will…” Clang-clang-clang. 

“His friends are dead for all we know,” interrupted skekGra. “One of them was kidnapped by the Hunter and the other two jumped headlong into the fire-tunnels.”

Hup abruptly paused in his noisemaking project. He knew that Archer had sacrificed himself to help save the Gelfling, but beyond that he was short on details. He had just assumed that his friends were still alive, but he had no proof. He did, however, have faith. 

“Deet Grottan Gelfling,” Hup said. “Deet know caves. Deet live." He slowly, firmly threw a rock to punctuate his point. Clang.

“That’s it,” said skekGra. “That was the last clang.”

“Wait…”

“Last clang,” skekGra repeated, shuffling over to the pile of boulders that was Lore. “Bring the thing,” he said, gesturing at Hup, who held Lore’s control stone in his non-rock-throwing hand. “You know, the orange circle thing.”

“…we…”

“Just put it on top of the pile here and back away.”

“…don’t…”

“Yes, yes, we don’t know what Lore will do now that his mission’s complete. Will he find the princess he imprinted on? Maybe. What will he do when he finds her? Who knows? Will he go off trampling off to the east to try to find…”

CLANG.

Hup looked down at his hand. The rock was still there. This time, the source of the clang was not Hup but urGoh, who had reached out with one of his long arms and knocked over a table.

“I love that table,” protested skekGra. “That’s my favorite table.”

“Do…not…say…that…name…”

“Oh, yes, all right, we took a vow to keep it a secret, I remember. I remember vows that I make.”

“Hup want go. Go now. Hup not scared.”

“See. He’s a brave little Podling. Not afraid to die in the desert if Lore goes rogue. Not afraid to get swept away all the way east to…”

CLANG.

“I also love that table.”

“Just…stop…talking…”

“Yes, yes, secrets. Vows.”

UrGoh wandered over to the pile of Lore.

“Brave…Podling…,” he began.

“Let’s just say the words. I’ll go first.” SkekGra pressed his hand onto one of the boulders. “Lore awaken; you are needed by Thra.” 

“Lore…awaken…you…are…needed…by…Thra.”

A small dust storm arose from the ground as the pile of boulders twirled and circled around an unseen core. Hup smiled and dropped his remaining clanging-rock. “Lore!” he exclaimed. 

Lore dipped its head down low near the Podling, then whipped it up and backwards to orient itself at urGoh and skekGra.

“Here, Podling,” said skekGra, tossing Hup his bag. He grabbed a flask from the wall and filled it with water and handed that to the Podling as well. “Take your stuff.” He then turned to Lore. “Go find your princess friend, if she lives. And take this little guy with you. And then… I don’t know, help them. If you can.”

For a moment, all were still. The low light of the Great Sun fell in bars connecting Lore’s body, skekGra’s hands, and urGoh’s eyes, as Hup, gripping his bag, stood in the shadows. The only movement was the dust descending from its recent disturbance, gently through the beams of golden light from the Great Sun. Then Lore snapped up Hup, turned towards the Sun, and, with a running leap, flung himself in long strides down the cliff.

******

The First Sister was already high over the Dark Wood, but the Gelfling still did not settle, still restless after the momentous events earlier in the day. Although the various clans had set up their own camps, groups of Gelfling moved freely from camp to camp and campfire to campfire, mixing with one another, sharing news from each corner of the Skarith Land, and speculating on what would happen now that the Skeksis had retreated and the crystal shard had been found.

In a secluded corner of forest, apart from all the activity, a lone woman prepared for an uncertain ritual. Nearby, an Arathim Threader perched on the gnarled trunk of a fallen tree, looking on. 

The woman chose to set up right in front of her tent, which lacked privacy, but the triangulation of the entrance to the tent, a kind of door, with the road in front of it was favorable for opening a way to dreamspace. She arranged three piles of three sturdy logs each, with kindling below: one fire at the edge of the road across from the tent flap, and one at either end of the tent. 

Onica had done this much hundreds of times to send herself into dreamspace, in order to quest for visions beyond the now. But she had never brought others with her, and never to speak to each other as in waking life. The rest of the ritual would be a combination of various pieces of lore, gathered here and there, and guesswork. Well, ritual was half intuition anyway.

Her thoughts were interrupted by voices traveling through the moonlit air. Naia and Kylan came into view as they rounded a curve on the dirt-packed road that led from the center of town. Both wore shades of brown, Naia’s tinged with green and Kylan’s with red, colors that lent themselves better to the forest than Onica’s gem-colored blues and purples. But their differences were good. They would make the ritual stronger. Hopefully.

“You’ve come.”

“Yes,” said Naia, as Kylan wandered over to the fallen tree and sat down next to the Threader. “Apparently all of this makes perfect sense to him.”

“Hello, Tavra,” Kylan said with a smile. The Threader sat silently for a moment, then slowly climbed up his arm and perched on his shoulder.

“All right,” said Onica. “This is something I’ve thought about but never actually tried. So I thought we’d experiment before we get Tavra’s sisters involved.”

“What do we need to do?” asked Kylan.

“The three of us will stand in a triangle, inverted relative to the fires. Naia, you’re in the center, in front of the door.”

“Are you sure? This is your ritual, shouldn’t you…”

“No, Naia, you are the _now_. You must stand in the door.”

“Sure,” she said. 

“I’m over here then?” said Kylan, choosing a spot near the road. “To the south?”

“Yes, you understand. Perfect.”

"What does he understand?” asked Naia.

“The road is parallel to the river,” said Onica. “The river flows from south to north. From the past to the future. Tavra, you stand on this stone next to the fire by the road, across from Naia. There are two more stones for your sisters near the other fires, for later if this works.” 

Tavra scampered down from Kylan’s shoulder and into position. Onica lit the fires, and each glowed with flames of the usual orange and yellow. Then she reached into a pouch and walked from fire to fire, tossing in handfuls of a deep blue powder. The flames shifted, now burning blue and green and purple.

“With these fires in place I can fall into the soothsayer's trance and enter dreamspace, in order to see distant places, paths into the future.”

“But you can’t do what Mother Aughra did,” said Naia. “Bring Gelfling together to speak freely in each other’s minds, not just in memories, but as in waking life.”

“No. There are rumors of Sifan soothsayers who could bring others into dreamspace with them, and maybe some of them could, but it may have just been creative use of drugs and potions. But I think there _is_ a secret ingredient that can make it happen. Not drugs and potions, but other Gelfling.”

“You mean people from other clans,” said Kylan. 

“Yes. The three of us can all access dreamspace, but in different ways, in accordance with the traditions of our clans. Sifan soothsayer arts allow me to catch a glimpse of future paths up until the moment they converge into the present. Dream-stitchers…”

“…are the opposite,” finished Kylan. “We can record memories, things that have already happened, from the most recent moment stretching back into the past.”

“But I’m just a healer,” said Naia.

“Naia you are the _now_. What happens when you heal?”

“Well, it is like dreamfasting, but not? I see the living thing in front of me, but, the small pieces of them, pieces that you can’t see with just your eyes, and I imagine them whole again and then they are.”

“You see things as they are now, as the past has brought them to be. And then you bring about their optimal future.”

Naia was silent. The gem-hued flames threw light on her face, uniting the greens and browns of swamp and forest with the Sifan colors of Onica’s tent. “I still don’t know if I believe any of this,” Naia said. “But I’m willing to try.”

Onica took her place in the remaining corner of the triangle and raised her hands, one towards Kylan and one towards Naia. 

“I’ll count down from three. On one, we enter a dreamfast, but at the same time, Naia, you enter your trance like you’re trying to heal us. Kylan, you enter your trance as if you’re trying to dream-stitch the current moment. I will enter the soothsayer’s trance.” 

The two of them raised their hands into position. Now that Onica had said her plan out loud, however, and the others stood there in complete trust, her resolve wavered. 

“Actually I don’t know whether or not this will make our minds will explode," she said. "If you two want to back down…”

"No, this is fascinating,” said Kylan. "I am very interested in seeing what happens.”

“Me too,” sighed Naia, dropping her skeptical face.

They raised their hands, the light from the three fires throwing light and shadows in chaotic patterns on snippets of hair, red and black and brown, and skin, beige and tan and green, and clothing, the color of gems and earth and swamp. Then the world was gone, and in a black space lit by white light, source unseen, stood Tavra on two legs, sword in hand, her silver hair framing her face.

******

Moonlight fell sharply down from the First Sister, illuminating the dream-etched words above the boulder-sealed tomb newly-hewn in the rocky face of a low hill. Another ray of moonlight, low and dappled through the trees, cast dancing leaf-shaped shadows as the Second Sister crept silently up the sky. Seated, Seladon’s eyes were level with the words. The words themselves were simple: Maudra Fara, the Rock Singer, perished in battle against the Skeksis oppressors.

 _Oppressors_ , thought Seladon. 

Beside the words, a flurry of symbols from Maudra Seethi representing the path to the next life; a dream-stitch from Maudra Mera recording Fara in her youth. A funeral with six maudras in attendance, and no seventh. The slaughter of the Stonewood in the last few days had claimed not only Fara but also much of her extended family and potential heirs. The remaining Stonewood were still returning from hiding, but even once they were back, it would remain an open question whether they would elect a new maudra, or join one of the other clans, or scatter across Thra. Stone-in-the-Wood would have to be abandoned until the Skeksis were gone, and although her sister had hope, Seladon harbored doubts in her heart that Skeksis would ever be gone. 

The Gelfling had a series of difficult choices ahead of them: when and how to attempt to heal the Crystal, whether the Spriton would, like the Stonewood, evacuate for fear of Skeksis raids, where the Grottan would live now that their home had Darkened, how to keep everyone fed with the blight spreading across the land. Before, Seladon had been so certain about what to do: what decisions to make, whether easy and hard, and when to make them, and why, and how. But she had been wrong. And Mother had been wrong too. And Mother had taught her everything. But maybe Mother had been right about some things? And Seladon herself had been right about some things too? She closed her eyes and pictured each of the other maudras, their words and deeds in the last few days. Some of them had to know what to do, didn’t they? But she had lost her ability to discern which ideas were good ones and which were garbage. Maybe she had never had it in the first place.

“All-Maudra Seladon?” It took Seladon a moment to recognize the speaker, brown and green in the moonlit shadows of the trees.

“Princess Naia? Does your mother need something? Is there an emergency?”

“No, there’s no emergency. And, uh, it’s just Naia.”

“I haven’t had the chance to apologize to your family. Your mother tried to warn me about the Skeksis, about what they did to your brother, but I didn’t listen, obviously.”

“Well. That’s all in the past,” said Naia. “So, this is going to sound strange, but…”

“Would you mind if I asked you a question?”

“Okay.”

Seladon tried to figure out how to phrase it, without coming right out and saying _Do you know how to maudra, because I don’t anymore_. “How do you think it’s different, being maudra of the Vapra and maudra of the Drenchen?”

“Oh… boy. I should just say that I don’t know, because I don’t know what it’s like to be Vapran. Any comparison will be based on stereotypes. Probably bad ones.” 

“Please.”

“All right. Here’s how it is. We live in a swamp. There are hundreds of families and we need to make sure that they’re fed, and clothed, and sheltered, and protected from danger. So we need authority. But we don’t need airs. We don’t have authority because we’re better than our people, but because someone needs to make sure that everyone is fed, clothed, sheltered, protected. I don’t look at a Drenchen farmer or fisher or weaver and see a peasant. I see a member of my clan, no more or less important than I am.”

“Ah. And the Vapra put on airs?”

“Look, I…”

“No, no, that’s fair. We do.” _The problem is_ , thought Seladon, _I don’t know how to be any other way_.

“So, anyway,” said Naia after an extended pause. “Onica, you know, Elder Cadia’s apprentice? She sent me to get you. She wants to talk to you about your sister.”

“Brea?” _Oh no_. “What did she do to the Sifa this time?”

“No, no,” said Naia. “Not about Brea. It’s about Tavra, actually.”

“Oh," Seladon said. She then put a series of thoughts together. "I _knew_ it. Tavra thought she could hide it from me, but I knew there was something between the two of them. Why didn’t Tavra trust me? Of course Tavra didn’t trust me. Would you have trusted me if you were my sister and you were dating outside of your clan and you didn’t want Mother to know?”

Naia paused for a moment as if trying to figure out what to say. “We… should hurry,” she said at last, turning back toward the road.

“Of course.” As Seladon rose from the bench, the dappled moonlight struck the blue of her dress, and she seemed to blend in with the night itself.

“Have you seen Brea?” asked Naia, as the two started walking down the dirt-packed road toward the Sifan camp. “Onica wants to talk to her too.”

"I haven’t seen her for hours, actually. Not since after the funeral.”

“She and my brother went looking for Rian and Deet before the Rose Sun set. I was hoping you’d have seen her since then.”

“Maybe we should go looking for them. The last sun set almost an hour ago.”

Just then, two men fell from the sky, and a woman fluttered breathlessly to the ground behind them.

Naia helped her brother to his feet. "For the love of Thra, what have you done this time?”

“It’s not my fault,” he replied as she dusted him off. "Rian’s the one who went off wandering into the woods.”

“Well, we’re back now,” said Brea. "For a while there we were being chased by some sort of woodland creature with very sharp… maybe let’s call them tentacle-teeth? But we climbed up a tree and I somehow managed to stay aloft while carrying more than twice my body weight, and now we’re all back safely. Deet’s in a cave, we think. We managed to throw a note in her direction before, you know, the tentacle-teeth situation.”

“We shouldn’t have left her,” said Rian. “Not with all the monsters roaming the woods at night.”

“Deet exploded a Skeksis earlier today," said Naia. "She’ll be fine. We need to talk to Onica." 

Naia guided the others in the direction of the Sifan camp. With Gurjin and Rian and Brea, she had dropped her stiff posture and clipped speech and herded the group down the road with an easy rapport. _I make people nervous_ , Seladon realized.

Seladon walked beside Brea, watching the twins joke with each other and try to cheer up Rian. Seladon looked at her remaining sister, who stayed behind the others to walk beside her. The thought of being maudra to the Vapra, let alone all the Gelfling, still made Seladon's stomach turn. She still didn’t know what to do. And it would be foolish to believe that she and Brea could repair all the broken trine between them in a single day. But, for now at least, Brea was walking beside her.

******

In the small yard in front of Onica’s tent, the moonlight filtered through the trees, casting shadows from above, while the three fires, now returned to their usual oranges and yellows, cast shadows from below. Tavra felt her eight legs drooping, and she realized that her new body was becoming drowsy. Floating through her mind, past the thoughts of her mother and sisters, past the memories of her home far away to the north, past the images of the moonlight on the sea, was the impression of a thousand Arathim, all in various states of slumber, pulling her towards them.

Kylan was playing a nameless tune on the lute, and Tavra felt the vibrations from Onica’s throat as she hummed along. That’s how hearing worked now, feeling vibrations across her skin. Thank Thra the Arathim whose mind she shared was used to interpreting Gelfling speech in such a way, otherwise Tavra would have had no idea how to learn.

Suddenly, the soft music was disturbed by a series of low irregular pulses, which, with the help of the hive mind, Tavra realized were the vibrations of half a dozen Gelfling treading along the hard-packed dirt road. Voices soon followed, including the two that she had been waiting for. Her sisters had arrived.

Tavra panicked. She scuttled down the emerald folds of Onica’s cloak, over the ridged bark of the fallen tree and into a hole in the rotting wood. “Tavra,” she heard Onica whisper in a panic, but Tavra only retreated more deeply into the mouldering tree trunk. 

Never before in her life had she run away from anything. She had been so sure of this plan, but maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe she had deep down assumed it would be impossible, and they would just have to give up. But now Seladon and Brea were actually here. 

“I found them.” Naia's voice. “Let’s do this.”

“Do what?” Seladon's. “I thought Onica just wanted to talk to us.” 

"Maybe the three of us should go into the tent.” Onica kept her voice steady, but Tavra could tell that she was nervous. She knew that she needed to reveal herself, or there would be no way for Onica to even begin to explain the situation. 

But she was stuck. And it was so easy to drift away, away from the woman who had snuck off to the beach to meet Onica, away from the adolescent who had begrudgingly let Seladon teach her how to fix her hair, away from the child who had steadied Brea as she took her first toddling steps. And it was so easy to fall into the network of thousands of Arathim minds, whispering in the dark, feeling the coolness of mud and stone, searching for crawlies with eight spindly arms, sucking the blood of the ones that they found.

“Tavra,” said a voice from outside her hiding place. Kylan had sat down beside her. “You love them all, don’t you?” And with that, her mind whipped back, past the crawlies and the mud and the dark, to Brea, Seladon, and Onica. 

_Is he talking to that log?_ Tavra heard Rian say. _Probably_ , said another man’s voice. _He does things like that some_ … The voice trailed off as Tavra slipped an arm out out of the rotting tree trunk, then another and another. She scuttled over to Onica at the tent flap, and made her way up to her shoulder.

“Is that… is that Tavra’s Threader?” asked Brea. Tavra knew Brea’s mind had in the span of seconds puzzled through various steps to the hypothesis that Tavra might still be present in the Threader’s body, and that this hypothesis had upset her, and that she would therefore push it aside and instead let her mind lose itself in the cataloguing any and all other possibilities.

“This is going to sound unbelievable,” said Onica in the low smooth voice that she used when she wanted to put others at ease. With Tavra back at her side, she was in her element, explaining the mystical and the strange. “Earlier today, Naia, Kylan, and I figured out how to open a way to dreamspace. We can send all three of you there, together.”

“With the Threader?” asked Seladon. “I don’t understand.”

“Does it… does it remember Tavra?” asked Brea. Tears welled in her eyes, and Tavra knew she was trying to hold back from what she had already figured out. "Will it be able to speak to us?”

“I think,” said Onica, “that Tavra will be able to speak with you.”

“You’re right,” said Seladon. “It is unbelievable. I know my sister was important to you, and maybe you’re trying to work out your grief the only way you know how, but…”

“Seladon.” Brea had swallowed the tears and spoke in a steady voice. “I believe her.”

“Brea, you’re confused.”

“I am not confused,” she responded, her voice rising. Tavra tensed, knowing that the two of them were on the edge of lapsing into one of their fights. Instead, Brea managed to control herself and said simply, "I want to try.” 

Tavra relaxed a little, and then relaxed completely with Seladon’s equally calm response. “All right. If you want to try, we’ll try. What do we have to lose? She’s already dead.”

Both moons were now overhead, casting the world below in such an intense silver that the two Vapran sisters and the Threader almost seemed to disappear into the moolight as they made their way to their stones by the fires. Rian and the other man—now that she could see his face Tavra realized he must be Naia’s brother—sat on the fallen tree to keep guard as the others entered dreamspace. In the center of the yard, inverse to the fires, Onica, Naia and Kylan made a triangle with their outstretched arms. And then, just as before, the yard disappeared, the world turned black, and Tavra was standing on her own two feet.

There, in white spots of light that mirrored the moonlight in which they had been standing, stood Brea and Seladon, staring at her past Onica, Naia, and Kylan, whose eyes were closed in concentration as they held open the pocket of dreamspace.

“I know this must be a shock,” said Tavra, tentatively. “But it seems like my mind linked with the Arathim and when it left my body… I left with it? Anyway, here I am.” 

Brea spoke first. “Can we… are we allowed to leave the stones?” she asked, hesitantly reaching out an arm. “Or will that break…”

“Tavra!” said Seladon, running towards Tavra with arms outstretched while Brea still tried to work out the rules. 

Tavra took her sister in her arms. “Ah, I missed arms,” she said, leaning into Seladon’s shoulder. Seladon laughed through tears and pulled Tavra closer. Tavra could feel from her sister’s embrace that she was still not quite okay. Well, what could be expected in such a short time?

Brea made her way off of her stone, looking around at their dreamspace as she made her way to her sisters and joined the embrace. Tavra could tell that she was also not okay. How was she going to help them be okay?

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” asked Brea quietly from Tavra’s shoulder.

“Well, it was very disorienting process.”

“Dying and turning into a spider?” asked Seladon.

“Becoming fully Arathim. So many minds together, and the mind of my host as well. It was like jumping off the side of a ship into the sea and not knowing how to swim back up to the surface again. And once I was able to orient myself, it took some time to make it to Stone-in-the-Wood. And then I don’t know. I didn’t know how to tell you, so I found Onica instead.”

“That makes sense,” said Brea, staring into the distance. “All of this makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Your mind had been merged with the Threader already, that much we knew, and then…”

“All right, Brea,” said Seladon. “Let’s just figure out what happens next.”

“Yes,” said Brea. “That’s a good idea. Let’s make a plan.”

Tavra resisted the urge to point out to them that their need to control the uncontrollable was yet another thing they had in common. 

Instead she said, “I don’t know what will happen next. I feel the Arathim calling to me all of the time. Maybe over time I will sink into them. Maybe I won’t. I can’t communicate with Gelfling unless the Threader merges with their minds, or here in dreamspace. But I can’t ask these three to do this for me all of the time. So, I don’t know.” 

“But where will you go, Tavra?” asked Seladon.

“For now, I will stay with Onica, I think. I was so worried what Mother would think about me dating outside the Vapra that I didn’t spend nearly as much time with her as I wanted to. And now… now that I’m like this, I look back on it and it seems like so much missed opportunity.”

“ _Dating_?” asked Brea in surprise while Seladon uttered simultaneously, “I knew it.”

Tavra laughed. “I hope you understand. We’ll still see each other. We can dock in Ha’rar from time to time, but… I’m still here, but things are not going to be the same.” 

The three held each other tightly and, as resolved as Tavra was about the future, she did not, for the moment, want to let go. And then, perhaps sparing her the pain of letting go, came the interruption.

“What is all this then?” said a voice. Tavra opened her eyes and there, beyond Seladon and Brea stood Mother Aughra.

******

For the second time since the First Sister had risen from the horizon, Aughra was disturbed in her sleep. The first time had been very brief, brief enough that she had assumed it to be a simple dream. The second time, however, lasted far too long to be a normal dream. The Gelfling were up to something.

Perhaps after the long day, many of them were dreamfasting. So many in one spot, in their various dreamfasts, might be enough to intrude on the slumber of Mother Aughra. But still there was that Grottan girl, whatever was going on with her. Perhaps she had caused the disturbance through dreamspace. That was more worrying. So, as much as Aughra wanted nothing more than to rest after a long day of, you know, death and rebirth, she pulled herself up from her bed of moss and walked toward the source of the disruption.

Campfires dotted Stone-in-the-Wood and the surrounding forest where the clans camped. “Foolish Gelfling, why are so many of you still awake?” Aughra muttered to herself. Then her eye caught three flames of blue, green, purple. “Aha. That must be the troublemakers.”

She approached. One fire set up along the road parallel to the river, a very powerful alignment. Two to either side of the tent flap. Yes, yes, a liminial space, all very proper. She recognized the two Vapran princesses standing by two of the fires, the Drenchen maudra’s daughter, the Spriton boy. There was a Sifa, too, that was to be expected. 

Aughra moseyed her way past the fallen log with the Stonewood Rian and his Drenchen friend, ignoring their startled faces and their gasps of _Mother Aughra_. “Yes, yes, I’m very surprising,” she said as she worked her way towards the third fire, intending to join their ritual from what seemed to be an available space. Then she saw the Threader and everything began to make sense. She stood in front of the Threader, closed her eyes, struck her cane on the leaf-covered earth, and joined the Gelfling.

“What is all this then?” she asked.

The Sifan woman’s eyes snapped open and the Gelfling, startled, exited their pocket of dreamspace. The two Vaprans were disorientated, now standing apart when they had been standing together, and the three who had been holding open the dreamspace slid to the ground, spent. 

“Gelfling joining together to create a pocket in dreamspace,” said Aughra, looming over the three lying exhausted on the ground. “Let’s see: a far-dreamer, a dream-stitcher, a dream-healer.” She paused for a moment and then laughed heartily. “Very clever. Very clever. You’d have had visions then.” 

“Mother Aughra,” said the older Vapran, the one who, quite frankly, had not been very helpful the last time Aughra had met a bunch of Gelfling in dreamspace, “they were kind enough to show us our sister….” 

“Yes, yes,” replied Aughra. “You two saw the woman within the spider, all of that was well and good. Touching reunion. I’m glad of it. But these three had visions as they held the gate open. They must have, spending that much of themselves at the border.” She pointed to the Sifa. “Start with the soothsayer then. She’ll be the most used to it. What did you see?”

“Seven circles of seven Gelfling,” the Sifan woman responded. “All seven clans mixed together. We sang and the skies filled with flames. And the story of the future was written in the ruins of Stone-in-the-Wood.” 

“Ha,” said Aughra, “I knew it. Spoken like a prophet. Very poetic." She turned to the Spriton. “You next.”

“I heard songs,” he began. “I thought it was one at first but it was two. One came from the direction of the castle, but the castle wasn’t there. The Great Crystal floated free and clear above the lake, its music unbounded. The other song came from the north, and with it came a sound like… like the wind in the tall grasses, but louder and repeating over and over again.”

“That’d be the sea,” replied Mother Aughra. “But also very poetic.” She turned to the last of the three. “And now, the dream-healer.”

“But I’m not… I’m not all mystical like these two,” she said. “I just heal people. My family’s always done it.” 

“Your family has always done it because you pass down the knowledge. All the dream-arts of the clans are so.” Aughra read the skeptical look on the dream-healer’s face and tried not to lose patience. _Time to switch into benevolent teacher mode._

“All children of Thra can connect to the Crystal,” began Aughra, “but the Gelfling have turned it into many arts. The far-dreamer sees things as they are not in the present, but well may be. The dream-stitcher takes things that were and preserves them before they no longer are. And the dream-healer sees things as they are in the now and encourages them to be as they should. You study the techniques of your elders, and you learn. No need to be particularly mystical. Now what did you see?" 

"Purple scars,” the dream-healer said at last. “Criss-crossing all the lands of Thra. And where there were scars there was blight. And then they grew lighter and lighter until they were clear.”

“The ley lines of Thra,” said Aughra. “A perfectly competent vision.” 

Aughra patted Naia on the shoulder and then worked her way over to the fallen tree and squeezed herself between Rian and Gurjin. The Threader skirted its way back to the Sifan woman’s shoulder. Naia helped up Kylan. The two princesses held each other by the hand. All made a circle around Mother Aughra, whole doled out instructions. 

“You,” she said to the dream-stitcher. “You go north to Ha’rar and listen for that song by the sea. Travel the coast if you have to. Far-dreamer, you should go too. Have a boat, don’t you? You might need a boat. Maybe not. Depends on where the song is. And you,” she continued, pointing to the dream-healer, “you need to find the song of the Great Crystal of Thra, as it was when it was free and clear, not with the Darkening mixed in.”

“But I can’t see the past. Or hear it. Or hear songs in crystals. And my mother needs me. We’re taking in hundreds of refugees in Sog, and…” 

“Your mother has plenty of children, doesn’t she? And future maudras ought to have adventures, and you’ve barely adventured yet.” Naia was silent. Mother Aughra knew her children well. “As I was about to say, you don’t need to travel to the past. The “scars” you saw are the crystal veins of Thra, ley lines that conduct the power of the Great Crystal throughout our world. There are still veins of crystal that have not yet been tainted with the Darkening. You need to find an unDarkened vein and follow it until you find a chunk of crystal that is large enough for a Gelfling to hear the vibrations. Start at Grot. Domrak is Darkened but you may find an unDarkened vein if you go into the far caves to the east. Search for a clear chunk of crystal, at least as large as you are. Then listen to its song. Take a Grottan with you. They’re good at listening to rocks.” 

“But Mother Aughra,” spoke the younger Vapran princess. “We have the crystal shard. Can’t we just take it to the castle and heal the Crystal and be done with it?” 

“I dunno. Maybe. Try it. Best to follow those visions too though. Seems important.”

With that, Aughra stood with groan. She was exhausted, and quite frankly, so were each of these young and foolish and brave and wise Gelfling. 

“I’m going to sleep now,” she said. “And so should you. Or not. Up to you. Whatever you do, stop sending ripples through dreamspace, at least until the Great Sun rises. You’re disturbing your elders.” 

Aughra grumbled but as she walked away from the seven young Gelfling (and one spider), she once again felt a lightness in her heart. Gelfling from five different clans coming together to open a pocket of dreamspace, out of empathy for their friends, and eliciting visions along the way. It had a flavor of the innocence of an age long past, a time before the urSkeks. As much as the shard itself, this development gave Aughra hope.

******

In the depths of the castle, it was difficult to discern whether it was day or night or one of the times in between. SkekTek had been working ceaselessly since the the others, saturated with the twin perfumes of humiliation and despair, had returned to the castle in defeat, only for him, the Scientist, to reveal himself as the source of their salvation.

Ever so carefully, he siphoned a sample from the vial of ichor he had extracted from his new Garthim, dropped it into a flask of Darkened water, and watched it sink to the bottom, black and viscous. Now, time to add a spark of effluence. The Scientist inserted two electrodes into the flask, took a step back, and flipped the switch. With a sudden start, the ichor in the flask pulsated, quivering in the purple liquid.

“Yes,” said the Scientist, “you will do nicely.” He placed the jar on a cart next to four identical, pulsating black blobs of gore. He was about to bring the cart down to the nursery, when a figure appeared in the door.

“The Emperor tells me you have created a new pet for me to play with.”

“SkekUng,” said skekTek. “You have returned to the castle with most remarkable swiftness.”

“When I heard what had happened to three of our own—three! I cannot bear it—I rushed here as fast as I could. For our numbers to dwindle so in a single day… something must be done about it.”

“Yes, yes, skekUng, dear friend, we are all troubled by the untimely demise of our illustrious compatriots. Disintegration! Detonation! Exsanguination! But fear not. For I have created a weapon that will neutralize the Gelfling threat.”

“Our dear Emperor has sung high praises of these new creatures. I am most anxious to see one.”

SkekTek, inwardly glowing at the words _high praises_ , led his comrade through the castle, wheeling along his cart of galvanized Garthim gore until he came to the new Garthim wing. There below, in a pit of rock, stood the Garthim itself, at rest in its deactivated state. 

“Garthim,” uttered skekUng in a low voice. “That’s what you’ve called it, have you not?”

“I have indeed.”

“A fine name. Strong.”

SkekTek found himself more and more pleased at skekUng’s return. _Finally, someone who truly appreciates my work._ “The creature is made from bits and pieces of Gruenak and Arathim Spitter. Its claws are sharp, its armor inpenetrable. The Gelfling will weep before it.”

“Gruenak? They’re all but extinct.”

“No _all but_ about it, I’m afraid,” said skekTek with a cackle. “I saw to that. But I believe I have figured out how to make new Garthim from samples of this one.” He turned to the far wall, where strands of Arathim silk, harvested from the caverns below the castle, formed five pockets. He poured the contents of one of his flasks into the first nest, then chuckled contentedly when the silk held the liquid in. With a triumphant claw, he sealed the pocket of silk shut against the wall.

“Behold! I have made seeds of its blood and I shall reap a bountiful harvest. More Garthim!”

“Scientist!” a voice boomed from the hallway. “Have you shown skekUng the Garthim?” The Emperor stood at the door, with two others. SkekEkt, harmless enough, but also that bully skekZok. 

“I have gazed upon the beast. Truly it is a thing of beauty,” answered skekUng. “But I have not yet been explained its functions. Lord Scientist, if you please.”

SkekTek led the other four Skeksis over to the gaze down into the Garthim pit. He positioned himself so that skekUng was to his left, the Emperor to his right, and that blasted Ritual Master could strain to look over their heads for all he cared. 

“So far,” the Scientist said, “it listens to my commands. To awaken, to come, to go. But it has not yet been tested outside of the walls of the castle.” 

“So let us decide now where to test it,” said skekUng. “Perhaps start small, with a Podling village.” 

“Why wait?” asked the Ritual Master. “Many Gelfling still linger at Stone-in-the-Wood. Take them now, while we have the chance.” 

“And if we cannot control the creature?” replied skekUng. “Then we will have tipped our hand with nothing to show for it.” 

“Friend skekUng is wise,” said skekTek. “The scientific process if one of trial and error. Of patience.”

“I want to destroy Gelfling,” said skekEkt. “I fear no Podlings. I have no need to destroy Podlings. Let us destroy Gelfling.” 

“SkekUng is right,” said the Emperor. “We cannot go rushing to Stone-in-the-Wood. There are plenty of other Gelfling besides those who gather there; even if we can harness the beast into a victory there, it will not end their threat. We must observe the creature first.”

“Can’t it at least be a Gelfling village?” asked skekEkt. “A small one, even.” 

“One of the outlying Stonewood villages, then?” asked skekUng.

“No,” said the Emperor, “the Stonewood villages have all been abandoned. We _have_ had some success in our endeavors over the past few weeks.” 

“The Plains, then?” suggested skekZok. “The Spriton are closest after the Stonewood.” 

“It is over a day to Sami Thicket,” said skekEkt. “I want to destroy Gelfling now.”

“We want a small village,” skekUng replied. “Not one of the capitals.”

“There are settlements on the edge of the Dark Wood,” said the Emperor. “Some Spriton, some Stonewood. Already a fearful bunch. The Hunter picked them off for years.” 

“Oh, the Hunter,” lamented skekEkt. “Such a noble soul. Such a noble face.” 

“All right, to the edge of the Forest then,” said skekUng. “And with the leave of the Scientist, I ask that I may lead this field expedition testing his glorious creation.”

“The two of you will go together,” said the Emperor. 

_A fine plan_ , thought the Scientist. The two of them would work well together. “And once the expedition is over,” he said, placing the last of his Garthim seeds in their nests, “this second generation will be ready to heed our commands. Our first squadron of Garthim."

The Emperor laughed. “Soon we shall again feast on essence, and revel fully in our immortality.” He patted the Scientist on the back with hearty congratulations, and with a rustle of fabric on the floor, led his companions towards the Throne Room to feast to their returned compatriot. 

SkekTek took one last look around the chamber, at the nests on the wall and his beautiful Garthim in the pit below, before following the others to the banquet where, no doubt, he would receive continued favor from the Emperor. _My creations will be the glory of the Skeksis, and of skekTek._  
  
In the dark of the nursery, hours passed in silence. The moons set, and dark clouds covered the stars, leaving the Bah-Lem Valley covered in blackest night. It was then that in each of the five nests, visible beneath the strong silk Spitter thread, the purple light of twin eyes began to glow through the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Dialogue in brackets] is supposed to be in Podling language. Also, still committed to the spelling dreamspace rather than Dream Space. Nothing else to note.


	4. (1.3) And Where Are You Going?

Part 1.3: And Where Are You Going?   
_Ten irritable women. A contested plan. A normal person. Very confused about treason. A deal for ninety-eight._  
POVs: Brea, Rian, Deet, Seladon, skekSa

******

The Great Sun had risen to its highest point in the sky, and the Rose Sun had cleared the trees surrounding Stone-in-the-Wood, with the Dying Sun close behind it. As such, all three Suns now beat down on a circle of ten hot, hungry, and increasingly irritable women. The meeting had started with the Great Sun barely on the horizon and showed no sign of ending soon. 

Brea was, at this point, a strong candidate for the most irritable of the ten. She had spent her life up until the present moment both avoiding meetings and also bursting into her mother’s throne room whenever she had something to say. At a gathering of maudras, however, the maudras spoke first; heirs spoke when they were invited to. And so since early morning Brea had been quietly enduring endless circular conversations, biting her lip and impatiently tapping her foot. 

First, there had been an entire hour spent on whether or not to actually start the meeting, or to wait for the remaining Stonewood Elders, currently having their own meeting in the palace, to decide who would represent them. Then Seladon went ahead and recounted the encounter with Mother Aughra from the previous night (funny how Mother Aughra could just show up and say her piece and wander off and not have to come to any meetings), about which Brea had all sorts of opinions which she was not invited to give, despite the fact that Maudra Laesid had asked Naia for her perspective on the event not once but _twice_ , and yes, Naia had actually had one of the relevant visions, and if they followed Aughra’s orders Laesid would have to send her daughter away on a dangerous quest, but Brea had been there too and she also had opinions to share. And Maudra Mera’s daughter, the eldest of the three heirs present, just sat there the whole time _sewing_ , which for some reason irritated Brea more than anything else. 

Just as Seladon finished her story, the Stonewood representative arrived, a very old woman named Elder Dana who was deaf in one ear, so that Seladon had to repeat every other word as she recounted the previous night’s events for a second time. And then the topic had switched to the Stonewood, who had decided, for now, to be ruled by the council of Elders, and whether they would go south to the swamps or north to Ha’rar, before the decision was reached that the Stonewood council would have another meeting before making a decision. And all the while the suns beat down upon them, and it was so much _hotter_ here than in Ha’rar.

“All right,” said Maudra Argot, “now that that’s been established, let’s figure out what to do about the Skeksis before we all roast under these infernal sky-lights.”

“Brea?” said Seladon, at last turning toward her sister. “You found the crystal shard, how do you think that should factor into our decision?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Brea blurted out. “We heal the Crystal, the sooner the better. The more time the Skeksis have to regroup, the more damage they may do. And the blight is spreading with every hour. If the Skeksis don’t kill us first, then we’ll starve to death. So let’s do it, and do it _quickly_.” She wasn’t quite sure whether or not her _quickly_ had crossed the line into passive-aggression, but she was too hot to worry about it much.

“Agreed,” said Laesid. "Let’s be rid of these murderous birds once and for all.” 

“At this point, if we don’t get rid of the Skeksis soon we will have to abandon the Plains completely,” said Mera. “We’re the closest to the castle after the Forest, and we have no cover.” 

“You will have soldiers from every clan, and Arathim,” said Seladon. “We are many and the Skeksis are few.” 

“Yes,” replied Mera. “But the Skeksis are clever. If we think they will not find a way, we are fools.” 

“And they may still pick us off, in small villages or travelers on the roads,” said Laesid. 

“Even one Gelfling drained is an abomination, and there have already been so many,” said Seethi. "We cannot let it happen to even one more.” 

“Then what are we waiting for?” interjected Brea, technically out of turn, although Seladon seemed to reluctant to stop her. Still feeling guilty, perhaps. Brea felt bad for playing on her sister’s guilt, but also very much wanted to save the world as quickly as possible. “We have the shard. We can go to the castle right now and just fix it and then we can all go home.”

The others were silent. Brea was the youngest among them, and underneath her certainty and impatience she knew that her words would seem naive to the older, harder women present. Still, she saw each of their faces soften as they cast aside thoughts of war and defense and instead imagined their people safe and more secure in their homes than they had ever been before.

“I agree with my sister,” said Seladon, after a pause. “We should do as Mother Aughra said, and follow the leads in the visions. But we should also mount a mission to the castle. We can and should do both. We need all the options we have.”

“Does anyone wish for a formal vote on Maudra Seladon’s position?”

Brea tried to keep her face as neutral as possible as it took several rounds of nominations and voting on voting for everyone to officially agree. She apparently was doing a poor job of it, since, while attempting to suppress an eye-roll, she caught Naia’s eye and saw the other girl trying to hold back a laugh. Brea had to bite her lip in order to keep from laughing herself.

“So we are agreed to mount a mission to the castle,” said Seladon when they had finished at last with the voting. “Now we have to figure out how.” 

“We have an army of Gelfling and Arathim,” said Mera, who seemed to have become as impatient as Brea. “Let’s storm the gates.”

“If we send an army, there will be more death,” said Seethi. “We may have to kill every last Skeksis before they let us near the Crystal.” 

The women were silent. 

“Then they’re gone,” said Mera, at last. 

“I hate to say it, but Mera is right,” said Laesid. “Whether or not we heal the Crystal, it solves the problem.” 

“No, Mother, I don’t think it does,” said Naia, catching Brea’s impulse to speak out of turn. “In the vision that Maudra Seladon mentioned I saw purple veins, Darkened veins of crystal criss-crossing all of Thra. The blight spreads, and death spreads with it. And I think…I think the opposite is true as well. Death spreads the blight. If we kill all of the Skeksis, and if the shard doesn’t work, if it doesn’t heal the Crystal and Thra with it, we’ll just have spread the blight all that much more. And we have all of that death on our hands.” 

“All of that death and double it,” said Brea. “In the Circle of the Suns, we learned that the Skeksis and their urRu counterparts used to be single beings. What happens to one still happens to the other. I saw with my own eyes, when the Hunter came after us, the Archer, at great risk to himself, fired arrow after arrow into his counterpart. Only the Hunter was struck, but each of them felt the blows, and each bled from identical wounds. We cannot kill one without killing the other. Even if we believe the Skeksis deserve death, the urRu do not.”

“Death should come from Thra alone,” said Seethi, quietly. “Not from us Gelfling. We have forgotten that, I fear.” 

“So no army then,” said Argot. “In which case, the question becomes how do we sneak?”

It was at that moment that a scream was heard from the outskirts of town, followed in quick succession by several others. The ten women spread their wings at once and reached for swords and daggers. Brea, weaponless, searched around for a large rock, when she looked down the road and saw an entire collection of large rocks tumbling toward her. She climbed up onto a bench, leapt into the air, and soared over the heads of the maudras, flying straight into the arms of a long-lost friend. 

“Lore,” she said. “Rescuing me even from boring meetings.”

“Hup bring Lore. Find Deet.”

“Yes, Hup, we will find Deet.” With that, Brea, perched on Lore’s rock-shoulder, turned towards the crowd of maudras, who, with the exception of Seladon and Naia, stood agape.

“I have a plan,” she said.

******

“I hate this plan,” said Rian as he trampled through the woods with Brea, Gurjin, Hup, and Lore. Three suns sprawled across the sky, but they were protected from their heat by the canopy of the forest.

“It’s just an idea,” said Brea, “and if Deet doesn’t like it, she doesn’t have to do it.”

“I’m more worried that she’ll agree.”

“She’s her own person, Rian,” said Gurjin.

"I know that. I just don’t want to see any more of my friends in danger. Which goes for you too, by the way.”

“I am also my own person,” Gurjin replied, casually lifting a low tree branch and holding it out of the way for the others. “And I’m not letting you go back into that castle without me.”

“You almost died, Gurjin.”

“You almost died, Rian. We both almost died. And now we’re both going to go back to the castle.”

“If Deet go, Hup go.” 

Rian had to admit that trying to sneak in the castle and heal the Crystal by himself was probably impossible, even if he had Lore to help him. So maybe it would be useful to have Gurjin and even Hup go with him as well. That didn’t mean he wanted Deet there, though. She wasn’t a soldier, even if she had these new Darkening powers, and besides, they had no idea what kind of mental state she was in. _But just try to talk Brea out of a plan_ , he thought. 

“We’re here,” said Brea as they reached the spot where the line of dead trees met healthy forest. “Lore, we think Deet is in there behind that line of withered vines. But we can’t get too close because she’s kind of consumed by the Darkening and we’ll wither and die, probably? But anyway, you’re made out of rocks, so you can’t wither. So I need you to go in and look for her. Can you do that?”

Lore stared silently at Brea for a moment, then reorientated his head towards the wall of blighted vines, sprung forth, and plowed through them. Rian instinctively stepped forward to chase after him, only for Gurjin to grab the back of his cloak and hold him in place.

Rian watched as Lore stomped off to the left, following a low ridge of rock until he was out of sight. Minutes passed. _What if she’s not even here?_ Rian thought in a sudden panic. He’d been so preoccupied with trying to talk to her that he had not really considered the possibility. The longer Lore was gone, the further the bottom of his stomach seemed to drop out. _If she’s not here, then how will I ever find her?_

A crash to the left as Lore came stomping through the withered vines a few yards from where they stood and gestured with one stony arm. Rian rushed to his side, the others following close behind.

“Did you see her?” asked Brea. “One nod for yes, two nods for no.”

One nod.

“Will she see us?” asked Rian.

Two nods.

“I’m going to send another note,” said Brea, scribbling on a piece of paper that seemed to have come from nowhere. “And I’m going to send some extra paper and a pencil so that she can respond this time.” She finished dashing off her lines. 

“What did you write?” asked Rian as Brea put paper, pencil, and note into a small pouch that she tied to one of Lore’s arm-rocks. She gave Lore a pat, and off he went again, choosing a new patch of vines to crash through. 

“Dearest Deet, We have found the legendary missing shard of the Crystal of Truth and would like to consult with you on the matter as soon as possible. Yours Sincerely, Brea.”

“That’s what you wrote? Brea, that’s terrible.” Rian had never before in his life given a thought to learning to read and write, but at this moment he deeply regretted his short-sightedness. _What if I need to communicate via a note passed by a giant rock monster to a friend in dire peril, and the only literate person around is a princess hyper-fixated on using her friends as puzzle-pieces in a plan to overthrow the social order?_ Why hadn’t he seen that one coming?

“Terrible?” responded Brea. “She seems intent on ignoring us. I thought I’d send her a message that would get her attention. If that doesn’t get her attention, nothing will.”

“Fine,” he said, fixating on the Lore-shaped hole in the vines. 

“I know you’re worried about her, Rian,” said Brea. “But everything is going to be all right.”

A loud crashing noise came echoing from within the line of withered trees. Gurjin once again grabbed Rian’s cloak before he could go rushing in.

“I just feel so helpless,” said Rian. 

A few moments later, Lore returned, this time through a previously-trampled hole, and, manipulating his giant boulder-hands, managed to gently grip the pouch by the string and hand it delicately to Brea.

Rian looked at the symbols on the page. He had never seen Deet’s writing before, and even without knowing what it said, he could tell that it was different from Brea’s. The lines were longer and skinnier and lighter, and he could imagine her hands gently flowing across the page in contrast to Brea’s firm, technical style. 

“What does it say?”

“It just says ‘I’m sorry. I can't.’”

Rian unfastened his cloak before Gurjin could grab it and dashed towards the closest Lore-shaped hole in the vines.

******

_Lore_ , thought some part of Deet’s mind, as the configuration of boulders peeked into her cave, blocking all of the fascinating shadows she had been watching. Deet’s mind, in its current state, sought no other companionship than the shadows and the many different combinations of light that fell around them. Deet’s mind did not want to think about Lore, because then she would think about Brea, and about Hup, and about Rian, and then she would think about her fathers and her brother and everyone she had ever loved. And that would be too much.

So she ignored Lore.

Lore, however, did not ignore Deet.

He placed one boulder-hand into the cave. There was some sort of pouch dangling off of it. Then, very gently, he pushed the pouch off of his hand so that it fell to the floor. With one careful hand, he nudged the pouch toward Deet. 

Deet’s mind, the part that recognized Lore, moved her eyes to the pouch, but the rest of her mind, the part that only cared for sunlight, moonlight, and shadows, refused to allow her to reach out a hand to grab it. And so, for a moment, they sat in a standstill: rock-creature, pouch, woman. 

Until Lore stood up and smashed through the entrance of the cave, sending rocky debris hurling in every direction. 

Deet let out a reflexive cry and sat up, scooting back to avoid the falling rocks and dust. Lore, having widened the entrance so that it was large enough for him to fit, collapsing much of the ceiling in the process, rummaged through the debris, picked up the pouch, and dropped it in Deet’s lap. 

Startled into motion for the first time in a day, Deet reached down, picked up the pouch, and opened it. She pulled out the note, unfolded it once, then again, and slowly read Brea’s words. Deet’s mind had trouble registering their meaning through its current fog. They wanted her help with something. But how could she help anyone? If she got anywhere near them, they’d crumble into dust. 

Her mind drifted again, this time into its own memories, to the moment she agreed to take the Sanctuary Tree’s healing powers. It had all happened quickly, but it had been her choice. She had been warned. And she had done what good she could do with those powers, and then that good had slipped so easily over a line into not-good, and now she was a murderer. Worse, she had no idea if she would do it again. _I am not a normal person anymore_ , thought Deet. _And I do not belong with other people._

Deet dropped the note. She reached back into the pouch and pulled out the pencil and paper. She wrote her reply, hung the pouch on Lore’s outstretched arm-rock, and leaned back against some fallen cave-rubble as Lore bounded off.

The leafless trees above her did nothing to block the light of the Great Sun and the Rose Sun and the Dying Sun, all directly overhead. Deet, no longer covered by the now-collapsed cave roof, closed her sensitive eyes but turned her face towards the Suns. The sensation was still new to her, but she couldn’t imagine ever growing tired of it. _It’ll be all right_ , thought Deet. _I may not be able to be with other Gelfling, but the suns are with me during the day, and the moons at night_. 

Her moment of peace was broken by a shout.

“Deet!”

Rian. _Go away. I can’t be with other people._

"Deet!” he yelled, and suddenly he appeared at a Lore-shaped gap in the withered vines. “De—“ His eyes fell upon her, and he stopped mid-syllable. For a moment, they stared silently at each other. And then he smiled.

“Thank goodness you’re okay,” he said quietly.

Deet’s veins pulsed with purple lightning. She had already accepted that she was a barren, murdering monster. But when he said she was okay, she almost believed it.

“You can’t get any closer,” she said.

“I know. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

“Did you get our note?”

“Yes,” she replied. “You need my help with something? I… my mind’s a little foggy.”

“What about the first note, from yesterday?”

“The first…?”

“Brea dropped it down last night,” he said, gesturing behind him. For the first time, Deet noticed Brea standing behind him, and Hup, and Gurjin. _Dropped it down?_

Deet slowly turned to the pile of rubble. She had spent the night and morning watching the shadows cast off of a rock, and now that she thought about it, that rock had indeed appeared out of nowhere. Gently, she brushed the rubble aside and reached down until she found a rock with a piece of paper tied to it. She picked it up, untied the note, and dropped the rock. _Deet. We miss you and we love you and we want you to be safe._

Deet stared at the note. It couldn’t possibly be right. No one could love her anymore. She was not a normal person. 

“I’m a murderer,” she said.

“Deet, the Skeksis would have killed us if you hadn’t…”

“No. We were many. Mother Aughra had returned. They were already afraid. Maybe they needed a push, but I could have frightened them away with a warning. Aimed the Darkening at a tree or a rock. But I didn’t even think about it. I just…killed. And now a Skeksis is dead, and an urRu, as kind and gentle as urVa or urGoh.”

“Deet, you were just trying to protect us,” said Brea.

“No,” Deet said, so fiercely that she surprised herself. “Don’t you understand? I was not in control. I may never be in control again.”

“Deet,” said Rian. “That doesn’t change anything. We miss you and we love you and we want you to be safe.”

Then, finally, for the first time since the battle, tears came to Deet’s eyes, and spilled. She heard Brea mutter a quiet command to Lore, who returned to Deet’s side and offered an arm. Deet leaned in. 

“You’ve been so brave,” said Rian. “You took on this burden from the Sanctuary Tree without hesitation so you could save as many creatures of Thra as possible. That’s terrifying. I don’t think I could have done it. But you didn’t even give it a second thought.”

“And we think we can fix it,” said Brea, gently. “We have the crystal shard. We can heal the Crystal. And then the Darkening will be gone, and the Skeksis and the urRu healed, and you’ll be free of this burden. We have a plan, Deet. Everything is going to be all right.”

The contents of the earlier note started assembling themselves into sense in Deet’s mind. “And you need my help?” she asked with a sniffle.

“Yes,” said Brea. “We need to get into the castle to heal the Crystal. The Skeksis still fear what happened at Stone-in-the-Wood. I think that if you lead the mission, you’ll be able to walk right into the castle without them stopping you. With you as their protector, Rian and Gurjin and Hup can get to the Crystal without the Skeksis interfering. Then they can replace the shard and heal the Crystal.”

The Crystal. Deet had almost forgotten about it. She turned toward the direction of the castle. The castle itself was blocked by the trees, but she could see the Crystal in her mind. She wanted, all of a sudden, to go to it.

“Do you really think we can heal the Crystal?" she said. "That everything will go back to normal?”

“Better than normal,” said Brea. “Better than it ever was before.”

“All right,” said Deet. “I’ll go. Alone.”

Rian and Hup spoke over each other in a cacophonous mix of Gelfling and Podling.

“No, listen,” said Deet. “It makes sense for me to go alone. They fear me, not any of you. And the Crystal is suspended mid-air. How will any of you get up there? You can't fly.”

Rian and Hup were silent. Deet knew them well enough to tell that they were both trying to come up with a reason why she was wrong.

“You can’t get up there either,” said Gurjin. “Unless you manage to jump off of something, which any of us non-flyers can also do, or if one of us is there to give you a boost.“

“That’s right,” said Rian. Hup nodded approvingly. 

“Sure, maybe Lore could help you up,” said Gurjin. Rian and Hup scowled. “But if the Skeksis see you trying to get to the Crystal they’ll just attack you. They may be scared of you, but they’re even more worried about the Crystal getting healed. And if they attack you, you’ll have to fight back, which, if I understand correctly, is something you’d rather not do. Plus Naia told me if we kill all the Skeksis it’ll just make the blight worse, because I also had that idea at one point. It seems like it would solve all of our problems, but apparently things are never that easy.”

“See?” said Rian. “It doesn’t make sense for you to go alone.”

“So Deet, what you can do best is be a distraction,” continued Gurjin. “Go in there, tell them that you want to talk or something. There are no more castle guards; once you’ve distracted the Skeksis, Rian, Hup and I can go in and take care of the Crystal before the Skeksis even notice we’re there.”

“Wow,” said Brea. “That’s actually a pretty good plan.”

“Actually?” replied Gurjin. “I was a castle guard for five years. I wasn’t the best at my job, but I wasn’t the worst either. I can come up with a strategic plan.”

“All right,” said Rian. “But Lore stays with Deet so that she has backup. He can help her escape if need be.”

“This is perfect,” said Brea. “I can’t believe this is really coming together. We just have to think of what Deet will say when she’s distracting the Skeksis.”

Everyone turned to Deet. Deet blinked. The Crystal. The purple veins inside of her called out to it. The Skeksis had caused it to Darken, had caused her to Darken. She imagined herself, standing before them in the Castle of the Crystal.

“I’ll know what to say,” she said, and her eyes flashed violet.

******

The Suns were still hours from setting, but had passed their zeniths and now threw low rays through the windows of the palace in Stone-in-the-Wood. Seladon had found a table and chair and placed them under a window, and was now going through a stack of papers. A map spreading from Ha’rar to Cera-Na and Wellspring. A rough list of population numbers. Notes from her meetings with Ethri and Seethi. Figuring out how many Gelfling the desert could support should the Skeksis attack Ha’rar. So far she had been able to handle these everyday mundane things. Charts and tables and graphs. If only that was all there was to being All-Maudra.

“Well, everything’s all sorted.”

Seladon looked up at her sister marching up to the table, a stray leaf resting in her hair. Her rock-monster friend was nowhere to be seen. “Deet agreed then?”

“Yes, and we managed to firm up the plan,” Brea said with obvious glee in her eyes as she explained the logistics.

“That does seem like the best idea we’ve got,” said Seladon when Brea had finished. “We’ll have to call another meeting as soon as possible to run through it one more time with the others. We need to finalize everything before the morning.”

“What happens in the morning?”

“We’re leaving. We can’t stay here much longer, the Skeksis won’t keep away forever.

“That’s all right," said Brea. "We know what to do next. A group of us will go to heal the Crystal, and just in case that doesn’t work, we’ll do as Mother Aughra says and send Kylan and Onica to Ha’rar and Naia to Grot. And we’ll work on preparations to evacuate the Vapra to Wellspring if we have to, and Maudras Mera and Laesid will prepare for the Spriton to join the Drenchen in Sog, and the Grottan and Stonewood have each divided into two groups going to Ha’rar and Great Smerth. We have a plan. We have several plans. Everything is fine.” 

"And where are you going, Brea?” Seladon asked. 

“Oh. I hadn’t thought about it. I guess in my mind, I was just going to sort of stay here," she said, gesturing around at Stone-in-the-Wood. "But that doesn’t make any sense. It makes more sense for me to go to the castle with everyone.” 

“It makes the most sense for you to come home with me to Ha’rar.” 

“No,” said Brea slowly, absentmindedly brushing her hair behind her ear while somehow failing to notice or remove the leaf. “No, because Rian and Gurjin are good soldiers but what if they need…” 

“Need what?” asked Seladon. She felt her frustration rising, so she tried to keep humor in her voice. “A scribe? A mathematics tutor? Someone to recite _The Geometry of the Suns_ at them from cover to cover?” 

“Don’t tease,” Brea said, looking away. Apparently the humor in Seladon’s voice hadn’t worked. She tried to think of another approach. _Honesty. Be honest, but… nicely._

“I need you in Ha’rar,” Seladon said. “We need to figure out how to move our entire society to the desert, and I can’t do it alone. Tavra’s gone and,” she paused, “and Mother’s gone, and you’re all I have left.” She managed to keep her voice from wavering at the end.

Brea pressed her lips together, still avoiding eye contact. She looked out the open doors towards the town and the Forest beyond. “It’s just that I’ve kind of build up a momentum ever since I discovered that symbol in the library and I feel like the momentum is taking me to the castle.” 

“Brea,” Seladon began, “you are heir to the throne. If I die, and you die, do you know who will lead the Vapra?” Somehow she had managed to keep her voice soft, although the words were hard.

Brea smiled, although it didn’t reach her eyes, and managed to turn back to Seladon. “Mother’s cousin Albanion is still alive, isn’t she?” she said.

“She’s Mother’s first cousin once-removed and she’s ancient. She has a few more trine tops. And then there’s no one.” 

“Well,” said Brea, “maybe you should start having children.” 

“Maybe _you_ should start having children.” 

At this, Brea laughed, almost a real laugh. “Very funny,” she said, and her voice grew soft like Seladon’s, but she turned her gaze away from her sister again. “But I understand. I’ll go home.” She said it like it was the last place she wanted to be. _How can I blame her? How can I help her?_ More emotional honesty, maybe. Seladon sighed.

“I’m not looking forward to it either,” she said, rising from her chair to stand beside Brea. “I left Ha’rar… poorly. I think it will be best if the people see you with me, unharmed and on my side.” 

“Of course I’m on your side,” Brea responded. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t be,” replied Seladon. They stood next to each other, but not touching, framed by the afternoon daylight coming through the open doors. “What if I’m not okay?” 

“Listen,” said Brea, turning toward Seladon and inching closer. “I admit that I didn’t love it when you, you know, had me arrested for treason. But you’ve changed. I know you have.” She rested her hand on her sister’s arm.

“I don’t even know myself any more,” Seladon said, hugging herself, and, in the process, lightly touching Brea’s hand on her arm. 

“ _I_ know you, and I think you’re fine now. So.” Brea said it like everything had been neatly tidied up, like the plans they had voted at the meeting earlier that day. But Seladon knew that things weren’t so neat.

“Brea, I burned mother’s body.” 

Brea’s hand slowly dropped from Seladon’s arm. She didn’t turn away, but her eyes lost focus a bit.

“All right,” she said at last. “Well, that’s to be expected, right? You used to be very confused about treason, but now you’re not anymore. So let’s go home and everyone will follow the plans and everything will be fine.” 

“Brea, I said if I die… but I might need you sooner than that. I know a lot has happened in the last few days, and I’ve learned a lot, but it’s all happened so fast. I don’t know if I can hold it all together once we get plunged back into life back home. And if I can’t hold it together, I might need you to take over.”

This time Brea did look away, unconsciously hugging herself the same way Seladon did. _Tavra was right. We are alike._ Then Brea smiled, gently but, it seemed, genuinely. She put her arms around her sister.

“I’ll help you however you need me to,” she said. “But you’re going to be fine. I know it.”

Seladon wasn’t so sure, but she knew not to press it. She returned the embrace for a few more seconds, removed the leaf from Brea’s hair, and then led Brea over to the table. “See if you can take a look at these crop estimates. They’re just based on memory obviously, but when we get back, Seethi will send over the actual numbers, and I’ll need you to look at them…”

The two of them lost themselves in mundane details, and in the details, for a while, they were briefly okay.

******

The moons had set but no sun had yet risen, so the night was lit only by the stars. After days of traveling through the insufferable inland, skekSa finally arrived at the castle, which, in the darkness, resembled nothing more than a collection of dull orange lights seeping through windows of various shapes and sizes. She walked through the entrance, noting the lack of guards. The castle had much less activity than it had had in days past, with Gelfling and Podlings underfoot.

With the lack of such bustle, she could clearly hear the din of voices feasting in the throne room. skekSa entered the chamber, scanned the crowd of Skeksis at the dining table, walked directly up to the Emperor, and plunged her dagger into the table beside his plate.

“What have you done?” she bellowed.

“I don’t know what you mean,” replied skekSo. He reached around the knife to a plate filled with leg of some beast, picked one up, and took a bite. 

“I was off sailing the far seas, finding Gruenaks for people,” she said, with a pointed look to the Chamberlain, “and generally charting new islands for the greater enlightenment of the Skeksis, and apparently while I was gone, you all started exploding Gelfling. You got them so worked up that the clans put aside hundreds of years of animosity, joined forces, and defeated you soundly in battle.”

“Aughra helped them,” cried skekOk, that nearsighted old bird. “And that Heretic and his urRu companion. And there was this Grottan girl who was all purple and covered in veins who can apparently explode people and…”

“And urVa did the unthinkable,” added skekEkt, as timorous as ever. “The unmentionable.”

“None of that is important,” said skekSa, drawing her dagger from the table. “You all made a series of terrible decisions, which I usually care little about, as long as they don’t affect me. But this time you made them so rashly and in such quick succession that my dear Sifa managed to get themselves wrapped up in the entire mess before I had the chance to arrive home and convince them to ditch the Skarith Land and come with me across the sea. You can have your other clans and farm them or implode them or whatever it is you wish to do with them, but you could have at least left me alone with my Sifa. Now it’s too late to get them to leave; they won’t leave the other clans behind.”

“Now listen,” said skekZok. “I admit, we got a little carried away. But now is not the time to fight among ourselves. The Gelfling are united against the Skeksis, so the Skeksis must be united against the Gelfling. There is no other way.”

“There is for me. I get in a ship and I sail away. And I don’t come back.”

“Wait, friend Mariner,” said the Chamberlain. “Friend Mariner wants the Sifa, yes? Cannot sail quite so far without their help?”

“I’m listening.”

“Friend Mariner helps us capture the other Gelfling. Quietly, of course. Behind the scenes. Soon, Sifa have no Gelfling allies left. Then they have no choice but to return to loyal, kindly skekSa.”

“I will not let her have an entire clan,” thundered skekSo, slamming the table with the leg-bone that he had been feasting upon.

“Not an entire clan,” said the Chamberlain. “ _Some_. Just some. How many does Friend Mariner need? Seven times seven is a nice round number. Surely we can spare forty-nine Sifa in return for skekSa’s help in subduing the Gelfling.”

“I’ll allow forty-nine,” said skekSo. “In return for your unwavering aid and loyalty to the Skeksis and this throne.”

Still, she paused. She disliked getting incorporated into the drama of the castle Skeksis. “Forty-nine is not very many,” she said. “And it is uncertain if and when the other Gelfling will be defeated.”

“SkekSa, with the Scientist’s new weapon, our victory over the Gelfling will be swift and sure,” said a voice.

“SkekUng,” she said in surprise. “I didn’t know you had returned to the castle.”

“The time is right,” he said. “The time for the Skeksis to be united. Come, join us, Lord Mariner.”

SkekSa paused for a moment to weigh her options. SkekUng was generally competent. If he was involved, the others might actually succeed in defeating the Gelfling. And with enough Sifa, she could rebuild the clan from scratch, sail away with them, and never come back to this blasted castle. Besides, she _was_ kind of bored.

"I’ll do it for the Sifa,” she said at last. “For _twice_ seven sevens of them. Ninety-eight. Now what is this new weapon?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a short one. A lot of setup. But starting with the next chapter we can finally finish tying up stuff from season one of the show and transition into the main plot of this story. Progress!


	5. (1.4) The Ritual of Departure

Part 1.4: The Ritual of Departure  
_An unalphabetized spice rack. Glowering at a Grottan. Paths, murky and clear. Finding ley lines. An unexpected route._  
POVs: Kylan, Gurjin, Brea, Naia, skekUng

******

The Great Sun had risen just long enough ago that its light barely skimmed the tops of the trees, throwing shadows of the leaves onto the town below. Kylan had been on the northern outskirts since dawn, copying the songs that Stonewood songtellers had recorded on the standing stones for generations. Now he hurried towards the river. The boats to Ha’rar and Cera-Na would be leaving soon.

He quickened his pace along the road, lined with abandoned houses in various states of ruin after the beating that Stone-in-the-Wood had taken over the past few weeks. Homes that careful hands had carved out of living trees, or piled together, stone by stone. Homes that had harbored countless generations of lives within them. All of that effort of creation and all those trine of harboring living spirits within them, all destroyed in a handful of days, all silent in the morning sunlight.

So Kylan was surprised, therefore, when he saw a flurry of movement through the window of a small stone cottage, one of several nestled against a rocky outcropping. Perhaps its owner had survived and was rushing to pack before evacuating to Great Smerth or points north. Kylan approached the open door, ready to offer assistance, when he saw not a Stonewood, but Brea, clutching a broom as she swept some rubble into a pile.

“Brea?”

She looked up, startled. “Oh, hello,” she said. “I was just tidying up in here.”

Kylan looked around the inside of the cottage, a single room with a kitchen, hearth, and a bed tucked into an alcove. At some point in the last few days, a hole had been punched in the roof, and now the floor was covered in dust and debris. He had no idea what any of that had to do with Brea though.

“Do you… know the people who live here?” he asked.

“No,” she said, blowing a stray hair out of her face before continuing to sweep. “No, I don’t. I was just passing by and the door was open, and I thought I’d straighten up a bit. It was a terrible mess. I’ve already righted all of the furniture, and I did the laundry. I’m waiting for it to dry.” She gestured at a window overlooking the backyard. Indeed, a row of sheets and clothing hung on a line, waving ever so slightly in the morning breeze.

“I’ve never done laundry before,” she said. “I just kind of got everything wet and hung it up. It took me forever to figure out what those little wooden clips were for. They make sure the sheets and things don’t blow away. Very clever.”

“Uh, yeah, very clever,” he said. “We should probably head down to the river though. The boats are supposed to leave soon.”

“Yes, that’s true,” she replied. “But right now, I’m sweeping. So.” She went back to hurriedly pushing the dust into the pile, which she had positioned not in front of the door, where it would be easy to dispose of, but in a back corner. Kylan could tell she hadn’t done much sweeping before either.

“Brea, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? I just need to finish with the sweeping and the laundry and _things_.” She gestured vaguely around the cottage on that last word. “And then I can get on the boat.” 

Clearly the answer was no, she was not okay. “Maybe I should get your sister,” he said, turning towards the door. 

“Ah, yes,” said Brea sharply, her knuckles whitening on the broom handle. “Which one? Tavra? Tavra’s a spider now, which is fine. You know, she died in my arms and I thought she was gone forever, and then she was still alive and a spider and I should be grateful for that much, shouldn’t I? So why am I so upset about it? What’s wrong with me?”

“I’m not sure there’s any right or wrong way to react to your sister dying and turning into a spider.”

“And Seladon,” continued Brea, oblivious to his response, “Seladon burned Mother. I told her it was all right. And it is, isn’t it? It’s just a superstition, that burned bodies can’t return to Thra. People die in fires and things, and ash is like a kind of dust, and dust is part of Thra, so...” 

She was gripping the broom handle so hard Kylan thought it might snap in half. He had a feeling that talking things out was not going to be effective. He dropped his bag, walked over to the table, and held up a plate. “Are these clean?” he asked, interrupting Brea’s monologue.

Brea’s grip on the broom relaxed. “I’m not sure. I was just going to give them a rinse and then put them back in the cupboard.” 

Kylan picked up the various dishes and placed them in a washtub he found by the back window. "I’ll go get some water from the well, and you’re going to need a dustpan. That’s a dustpan,” he said, pointing to one hanging on the wall by the door on his way out. 

By the time he returned with a bucket full of water, the floor was clean and Brea was standing by the spice rack, smelling the contents of one of the jars.

“Is this darrowroot?” she asked.

“No. Darrowroot is red, not black. Are you going to cook something?” That would be a new development, probably in the wrong direction. He tried not to bring up the boats again, but he was starting to get worried that they’d be late. He assumed they wouldn’t leave without Brea, though. She was fairly important. 

“Oh, no, I just thought I’d alphabetize these spice jars while waiting for the laundry to dry. None of them have labels though.”

“I guess whoever lived here didn’t read,” he said, placing the bucket on the floor. “They probably had their own system.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” she said, still examining the jar. “Whoever lived here.”

“There’s a good chance of it.”

Brea sank down into a chair and put the jar on the table. “What am I doing?”

He sat down across from her. “I would say you’re processing your grief in a way that is working for you.”

She exhaled slowly and put the lid on the jar. “I’m not ready to go home. As long as we were still here, planning the next steps, I was too busy to think about everything that's happened. I haven’t been home since I watched my mother die and my sister had me thrown into a cage. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get back and I don’t have time to have emotional turmoil. There’s too much to do.”

“In that case,” he said, “I think you should finish cleaning this house right now while you have the chance.”

“It’s silly,” she said. “And you’re right, the boats are leaving soon.”

“It’s not silly,” he replied. “And I’ve never been an important person myself, but I assume that the boats won’t leave without you.”

“I do hate to leave things half-finished,” she said. She walked to the sink and began to rinse the dishes. Kylan went out back and gathered the laundry, now more or less dry, and began folding it. They worked in silence for a while. Brea began stacking the plates and cups in the cupboard. Now that her task involved organizing objects neatly by size and shape, she seemed to be in her element.

“Seladon says she needs my help, and I want to help,” she began, stacking the cups in a geometric pattern that optimized the shelf space. “But it was never supposed to be me. Seladon was heir, and if anything happened to her, it would be Tavra. Not me. Out here, where we have to improvise, I can be a leader, but back in Ha’rar with all the rules and hierarchy… I’m just so used to saying whatever I think and I don’t know the difference between being diplomatic and lying. I don’t know how to be a maudra, when it seems like every word you say has to have three different meanings behind it.”

Although he would never be anywhere near her position in life, he thought about the maudras he had known, Maudra Mera and Naia’s mother, and about Naia, who wore her future role with a whole lot less turmoil than Brea or her sisters.

“Again,” he began, folding a pillowcase into a neat square, “I have never been someone important. But I don’t see how being a maudra means you can’t be yourself. And seeing as I just cut ties with Maudra Mera over her lying to me about my parents’ death for my entire childhood, I think a maudra whose greatest flaw is telling the truth too much would be refreshing.” He placed the pile of bedding gently into a trunk at the foot of the bed.

Brea stacked the last cup into perfect position and closed the cupboard door. She looked around the cottage, impeccable save for the hole in the roof and the un-alphabetized spice rack.

“First of all,” she said upon finishing the inspection, “I feel much better now. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get to Ha’rar, but I am ready to go get on the boat. And second of all, you have to stop saying that you’re not an important person.”

Kylan laughed quietly. “You’ve never been a peasant, have you?” 

"No, I haven’t,” she said. “But you just told me that it was okay for me to tell the truth and the truth is that we’re all important. And the truth is that the owner of this house is dead, and so many people are dead, but we’re not going to give up until we’ve healed the Crystal and the Skeksis are gone. Now let’s go get on that boat.” 

Kylan looked around the cottage. He had to admit he also kind of felt better about the world now that this one small part of it was all put to order. He grabbed his bag and went outside, with Brea close behind him. She closed the door, firmly, and the two of them walked down the road, leaving the silent, empty houses behind.

******

The Great Sun had risen above the tops of the trees, but the day was not yet warm. Gurjin wrapped his cloak more tightly around him to fend off the morning breeze, and tried not to glower at the strange boy that his sister was currently trying to teach how to fasten a landstrider harness. His glower was briefly interrupted when he spotted Kylan and Brea coming down the road towards the river. They parted ways at the dock, and Kylan walked over to join Gurjin.

“She looks cheerful,” Gurjin said, with a look in Brea’s direction. “What were you two up to?”

“Cleaning up a cottage on the outskirts of town.”

“Is that… is that supposed to have some sort of double-meaning?”

“What? No. Just, literally. Laundry and dishes and things.”

“You know what, I’m not going to ask,” Gurjin replied. “But she looks better. I was getting worried that she was going to snap.” He watched as Brea and Seladon boarded the Sifan river-boat. “Good luck up there in Ha’rar. Those are two very intense women.”

“I’m staying with Onica. Although she’s also intense, but in a different way. Why are you glowering at Naia?”

“I’m not glowering at Naia.”

“You’re definitely glowering.”

“I’m glowering at that Grottan who clearly knows nothing about landstriders.” Gurjin tightened his grip on his cloak. 

“Presumably he’s going with Naia because he knows a lot about caves.” Kylan always tried to see the best in everyone. It was annoying.

“He's not a fighter,” replied Gurjin. “What’s going to happen if they run into danger?”

“Do you… do you think Naia needs a man to protect her?” Kylan asked. He had that wavering tone in his voice that he got on the rare occasion he had trouble figuring out what other people were thinking.

“No, of course not. But she doesn’t need a burden either.”

“I’m not a fighter, and Naia and I managed to do a fairly good job rescuing you from the castle.”

“That’s different,” said Gurjin, biting his lip as he tried to figure out how it was different. “We’ve known you forever.” 

“Well, maybe we should go get to know… what’s his name?”

“I don’t know.” Gurjin realized, at this point, that he sounded ridiculous, and he knew that Kylan knew that he sounded ridiculous, and so he gave in when Kylan put an arm around his shoulder and dragged him over to his sister, the Grottan, and the landstrider. Up close, Gurjin could see that the Grottan was accompanied by a Threader, hidden within the folds of his hooded cloak.

“Hi,” said Kylan. 

“Hi,” said Naia, tying off a knot on the landstrider’s harness. “I think I managed to do this right.”

“It looks good to me,” said Kylan.

“Kylan is the one who taught me how to ride a landstrider,” said Naia, turning toward the Grottan.

“Is that how we’re describing what happened?” asked Kylan.

“Kylan is the one who I convinced to borrow one of Maudra Mera’s landstriders and ride with me to Stone-in-the-Wood and back in a single night the first time I visited Sami Thicket.”

“For reference, we were twelve, and it was terrifying.” 

“Yes, well, by the end of the night I knew how to ride a landstrider,” said Naia. She absent-mindedly pointed a thumb at Gurjin while turning to re-arrange the contents of her bag. “This is my brother, by the way.”

“Gurjin,” he said as neutrally as he could manage.

“I’m Amri,” the Grottan replied with cheer, before indicating the Threader, “and this little monster that used to be attached to my face is Karlak. Or that's what I call him anyway. He hijacked my mind once, but we’re friends now. I think.”

Gurjin took a deep breath. Then he managed to sputter out a “nice to meet you” while grabbing Naia’s arm and pulling her off to the side. “Maybe I should come with you,” he said.

“I thought you were going to the castle with Rian.”

“He’s friends with his face-spider.”

“The Arathim are our allies now,” Naia replied. “We need them to help explore the caves.”

“And you keep smiling at him.” 

“Who, the Threader?”

“You know who I mean,” he replied, nodding towards the Grottan. He and Kylan were looking at a scroll Kylan had been carrying for some reason. What was it with Naia and accumulating these bookish types? 

“I don’t know, he’s funny,” replied Naia.

“Just don’t get distracted.” 

Naia laughed. “ _You’re_ going to lecture _me_ about not getting ‘distracted’?” 

He realized that he was pushing it, but also he couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth. “It’s just that you go overboard when people you love are in danger.”

“First of all,” said Naia, her smile disappearing, “I just met this person, love is not on the table. Second of all, you think if I don’t love someone, it’s easier to just abandon them to peril?”

“Just watch yourself.” He knew at this point that he had pushed every one of her buttons and he was not going to get away with it.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know.” He was raising his voice, but didn’t care. “Maybe my sister is about to run straight into a blighted death-cave with a total stranger while I go back to the castle where I almost died, and who knows? Maybe by this time tomorrow we’ll both be dead. Because people die now, Naia. All the time.” _Die, or worse_ , he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak about the _worse_.

Naia’s face relaxed away from anger, but was still stern. “Are you finally ready to show me what happened?” she asked.

He knew he had to. If he was going to go back to the castle, he’d need to stop trying to shove down the memories of what had happened to him there, or he’d just end up freaking out and being a burden to Rian. But he didn’t want to burden his sister either. “It’s bad,” he said.

“I spent days healing two festering gouge wounds in your back. I know it was bad.” Naia sat down against a tree and patted the spot next to her. He sighed, and sat down. She raised her right hand, and he raised his left to meet it, and then he was back in the castle.

 _Where are we?_ she asked.

 _Me and Rian’s room_.

 _Your side is a mess_.

_I’ve seen your room, you can’t talk._

_Why are we here?_

A flash of pain and claws and dark instruments. Then they were back in his and Rian’s old room.

 _I just need a minute_ , he said.

 _I’m here with you_ , she said. _We can do this_. She shared one of their earliest memories, of climbing up a series of bench, table, window ledge to look out together over the swamp from their mother’s work room. They must have been around two trine old.

 _All right_ , he thought, watching his tiny self grab Naia’s hand and jump several feet down into their father’s arms. _I’m ready_.

This time when the flash of pain and claws and dark instruments came to him, he let it expand to fill the whole space of his mind. He showed her everything from sneaking into the Scientist’s laboratory with Rian until the moment Naia and Kylan had broken him out of his cell, all in a garbled order of images of pain intermingled with dread, of never knowing when a Skeksis came into the room whether he would be dead or alive by the time it left. And in the center of the images, the Crystal, violet with rage, sucking him in, pulling on the tiny pieces that made up his body until they stretched and melted. 

And then his memories brought him out of the castle into the woods, right after he had been rescued. He sat alone with Naia, her hands on his back, healing his wounds, although she said the infection was so bad that she would have to retreat them over the next few days. It was only now, sharing her half of the memory, that he saw the silent tears on her face as she sat behind him. 

They broke the dreamfast, and he let his head fall onto his sister’s shoulder. 

“You were very brave,” she said after a few moments.

“I don’t want to be brave. I just don’t want that to happen to anyone ever again.”

“Well, we’re going to fix it. And in order to do so, I will have to walk into a blighted death-cave.”

“And I have to go back to the castle.”

“So let’s do it. And we’ll try not to die.”

He stood first and helped Naia to her feet. “If I do die, try to explain to mom and dad and the girls why I had to go back.”

“I will,” she replied. “And if I die, promise me you’ll help Eliona prepare to take over for Mom someday. She’s very organized and very bright, but she’s never even been outside of the swamp.”

“And I’ll never let her. I’m not losing another sister.” 

Naia rolled her eyes as they walked back towards the landstrider. “Well, that’ll be Eliona’s problem,” she said. “I won’t have to deal with you anymore.” She smiled at the joke, but her voice was sad. Gurjin put a hand on her head, and she leaned into his shoulder. 

The day progressed. Gurjin said good-bye to Kylan as the river-boats took off downstream towards Ha’rar and points north. He said good-bye to Naia as she and Amri and the Threader and a file of Spitters headed east towards the mountains. He said good-bye to his mother as she led their people and a host of refugees south to Great Smerth. Then, joining Rian and Hup, he turned west, towards Deet, and towards the castle, and started walking into the late afternoon rays of the Great Sun.

******

Although they had left in the morning and the Black River’s current was swift, the Great Sun had set and the Rose Sun was low on the horizon by the time the river-boats arrived in Ha’rar. Standing on the deck of Onica’s boat, Brea watched as the snow-capped mountains that surrounded the city came into view, glowing red in the fading evening light.

Brea remained on the deck as they docked, ignoring the hustle of Sifan sailors tugging on ropes and unloading crates, until only Onica (and of course Tavra, who was a spider) and Kylan remained. 

“Well,” she said, addressing them, “are you ready to go to the library and get started?”

“Started on what?” asked Onica.

“In addition to Mother Aughra’s very specific advice to the two of you to ‘go north and listen to the sea’ and ‘have a boat,’ respectively, I thought one more concrete thing we could do is have you two look at my vision book and see what you could make of it.”

“The one that showed you the symbol?” said Onica, her interest clearly piqued. 

Kylan looked more skeptical. “Don’t you want to go back home?” he asked, looking up the hill towards the Citadel. Clearly he still remembered her sort-of nervous breakdown that morning. She would have to work around that somehow.

“Why?” Brea responded. “It’s not like I have anything to unpack. The Skeksis didn’t really give me time to pack a bag before they dragged me away.” _Way to go Brea. That’ll convince him_. “If the two of you are tired, that’s fine. We can do it later. I’m going to the library though.” She found the truth tumbling out of her mouth. “I need to go to the library first.” _Not home. Not yet_.

“I’ll go,” said Onica. “It’s too late to set up camp on the beach tonight. We’ll just sleep in the boat. I’ve always wanted to see that library. But I’d like to eat something first.”

Apparently the truth had worked, as Kylan looked slightly more convinced than previously, but still cautious. “Are you sure your sister doesn’t need you?”

“She said something about sitting in the bath for an hour and then sleeping until Rose Sun dawn.” Brea turned to Onica. “There’s an inn that we pass on the way to the library. We can buy food there, can’t we? People buy food at inns, right?”

“Yes,” Onica said with a laugh. “Yes, they do.”

“Are you coming?” Brea asked Kylan as she followed Onica towards the gangplank. “I honestly think the book might be dream-stitched, so I was really hoping you’d take a look at it.”

“Of course I want to see the book,” Kylan muttered, following the two women onto the docks.

One meal later, the Rose Sun having set and the First Sister risen over the horizon, the three Gelfling (plus one spider) walked through the entrance of the dimly-lit library.

“Your Highness,” said the Librarian, emerging from his room in the back. “Welcome home. What are you doing here this late?”

“I want to show Onica and Kylan the book, the one that triggered the vision. I was hoping they’d be able to figure out what happened.”

The Librarian sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s too late to put that lightning back in the bottle. I’ll go get it for you. Try not to cause so much trouble with it this time.” With that, he went off to retrieve it from his office.

“What happened, exactly, when you saw the vision?” asked Onica.

“I can show you,” said Brea, extending her hand. “That’s probably the easiest way. Kylan, do you want to join us?”

No response. Brea turned around to find Kylan staring up at the dizzying heights of the library. She waved a hand in front of his face, and he jumped back, startled.

“Sorry, did you say something?” he asked, already losing focus again and turning his head towards a stack of books to his left. “Can I touch one?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“I just never even knew a place like this could exist,” he said, gently picking up the top book on the pile and leafing through it. “This book was written over two-hundred trine ago.” 

“We have much older ones than that,” the Librarian said, re-entering the room with the vision book. “This one, for example.”

Kylan placed the book he had been reading back on top of the stack. “Is it okay to just leave it here?” he asked. “Shouldn’t it be organized?”

“I like the way this one thinks,” said the Librarian. “We actually need to update the inventory so we can decide which books to start evacuating to Wellspring. Don’t want all this knowledge destroyed should the current political situation worsen.”

“Do you need help?” asked Kylan.

 _Okay, now he’s making me look bad_ , thought Brea. _I never offer to help_. She realized once again how much she had always assumed that the world just functioned smoothly around her without giving a thought to all of the people who worked hard to make it so.

“Yes, actually," said the Librarian, "if you have the time.”

Kylan looked at Onica. “You can’t just sit on a rock by the water all day waiting for a magic song to appear out of nowhere,” she said with a shrug.

“Fantastic,” said the Librarian. “I usually begin work by the time the Great Sun clears the mountains; come by any time after then.”

“I will,” said Kylan.

Brea was about to say that she would join them, when she remembered that she had promised to help Seladon with governing and meetings and _evacuations_ and all those things, so that she would not, in fact, have much free time for research. _Best make use of the time I have right now_ , she thought, taking the vision book from the Librarian. 

“Try not to destroy the library this time,” he said, retreating back to his office.

“I didn’t _destroy_ the library,” Brea said. _Although I certainly didn’t check in on the damage after things had settled down._ Somehow everything had just gotten cleaned up. Brea frowned a little at her old self—from just a week or two ago, was it?— who hadn’t even bothered to notice.

“What did happen when you had the vision?” asked Kylan, helpfully distracting her from her train of thought. 

“I’ll show you,” said Brea. "If you're ready now." She held up her hand, and the three of them entered the memory.

“It caused a storm?” asked Onica when they had emerged from the dreamfast. “That’s odd. A dream-stitch shouldn’t be able to physically move papers around, should it?”

“Not usually,” said Kylan. “Although I suppose if it’s a very strong stitch, the person seeing it might act out and start knocking things over.”

“I wasn’t acting out,” said Brea. “I think I would remember that.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything,” he said with a quiet smile. _He smiles like that a lot_ , thought a corner of Brea's mind, recalling their conversation earlier that morning in Stone-in-the-Wood. Her focus hung onto the thought for a moment before she filed it away and shifted back to the task at hand. 

“Anyway it was still going on when I left,” said Brea. “The wind and the lights and everything. So it couldn’t have been me.”

“It doesn’t sound like a dream-stitch then,” said Kylan. 

“Here, take a look,” said Brea, handing him the book.

He ran his hand over the front, the back, the spine. “Actually, the cover _is_ dream-stitched,” he said at last, “but I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s beyond my skill, or Maudra Mera’s as far as I know. First, it _is_ a very strong stitch. Second, and stranger, it’s like the stitched memory is… sealed? Light dream stitches can reveal images even without a dreamfast, like the feeling of a sunny day or the scent of flowers, but for heavier ones that encode full memories, you need to enter into a dreamfast with the object. But this isn’t like either of those cases.”

“Yes, I’d read that book several times before I triggered the vision,” said Brea. “Although I suppose I never tried to dreamfast with it. Should I be dreamfasting with more books?” She eyed the shelf to her right.

He laughed. “Maybe. But usually there’s an outward sign, like a dream-etching.”

“Yes, I’ve seen ones like those.”

“You were holding the book, though, when it happened,” said Onica. “Maybe you did initiate a dreamfast somehow?”

“If I did, it wasn’t on purpose.”

“You said something,” said Kylan. “Something like _I demand the truth_. Maybe that’s what did it.”

“Like a password?” asked Brea.

“Probably not exactly a password. If there was an exact word or phrase, then there’s no guarantee that anyone would ever be able to stumble upon the right one. Maybe it was more like it read the intent in your words.”

“Is that possible?” asked Onica.

“Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m half-guessing. But it seems like someone pulled it off.”

“A Gelfling?” Brea asked.

“I guess,” he replied. “The only other creature I know of who is proficient in the dream-arts is Mother Aughra.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Brea. “The whole thing was designed by skekGra and urGoh. Are we sure it wasn’t them?”

“If the Skeksis and urRu are not of Thra,” said Onica, “then they cannot connect to our Crystal and they cannot use our dream-arts.”

“Maybe it was Mother Aughra and she just forgot?” said Brea. “That seems strangely plausible.”

Kylan leafed gently through the book. “Here,” he said, pointing to a page halfway through. “There’s one here too.” The page showed an image of the castle, cut in a cross-section to reveal the Crystal within its chamber. Unlike the Crystal she had seen in the castle, the image of the Crystal in the book was clear, untainted by the Darkening. “Why don’t you try activating it?” he asked. 

Brea placed a hand over the page. “The last time I did this it caused a lot of damage,” she said, surprising herself a little with her caution.

“Maybe we can help you control it,” said Kylan. He raised his hand to Onica, as if for a dreamfast, and she nodded, then raised her hand to Brea’s.

 _They seem confident enough_. Plus, if there _were_ any more secret messages hidden in the book, she wanted to see them. And if things went south again and the library became a little disheveled, well, the wrath of the Librarian was mild at worst. _And_ she would help clean up this time. Brea touched her hand to Onica’s, closed her eyes and spoke. “I demand the truth.”

As before, lights flashed, but the wind did not pick up and the room did not tremble. In the sky, the light arranged itself into an intricate spiral ornamented with circles of various colors, shades, and sizes. 

“I need to sketch this now,” Brea said.

“I can do it,” said Kylan. “You’ll have to remember the colors though.” He grabbed a blank piece of paper from the floor and placed his free hand on it. A burst of light, and the pattern was dream-etched onto the paper in black and white.

Brea broke her connection to the book and immediately grabbed a pencil from her pocket. “Rose, yellow, blue,” she muttered to herself as she labeled the colors of the dream-etched pattern before she could forget. 

“Paint,” she said automatically, reaching out her hand for a moment before retracting it. _Right_ , she thought. _Don’t just expect people to do things for me_. 

“Sorry, I’ll get it.” She went into a drawer and retrieved her pastels, and proceeded to roughly fill in the colors. When she was done, she tacked up the finished product. 

“So what does this mean?” asked Onica.

“I was hoping you’d know,” said Brea.

“I’ve never seen it before. It’s not a Gelfling symbol.”

“Another puzzle,” said Brea. “Just like the last one left by skekGra and urGoh. But if they’re not able to dream-stitch…”

“...they must have been working with someone who could,” said Kylan.

 _A mystery. Good_. A mystery was something to solve, a clear-cut problem to focus on in the upcoming days. Something she could turn to when she needed an escape from planning the evacuation of her home, and from the even murkier task of matching responsibility to privilege. Brea traced a finger along the dream-etching of the new symbol. The spiral image curled outward, a path to follow, a clear next step forward.

******

Rose Sun dusk had fallen by the time Naia, Amri, and the Arathim arrived on the far side of the Mountains of Grot, bathing them in the red-violet half-light of the Dying Sun. In this dying light, Amri’s Threader, squeezing its pliant body up out of a crack in the rocks, scuttled up Amri’s leg, and attached itself to his face so that his dark eyes glazed over and his normally animated expression fell into stillness.

Naia thought she would be ready for this after she’d seen Tavra speak through Onica, but in that case, it had been a Gelfling mind sharing another Gelfling’s body. This was something completely different. When Threader-Amri opened its mouth, an unearthly voice emerged, full of scratches and echoes.

“The caves are silent, dark, empty. From here to the Tomb the path is clear.” 

Naia shuddered. It couldn’t think of any less creepy way to phrase that? For a moment, they stood staring at each other, and Naia wondered if the Threader had decided that it wanted to keep its Gelfling host after all. Then all at once it retracted its spindly claw from Amri’s mouth and disappeared into the folds of his cloak.

Amri blinked a few times as the light returned to his eyes. “How was that?” he asked. “Did I look cool?”

“Kind of. In a horrifying way.”

“Good, good. I like to inspire awe in people.”

“Does it… hurt?”

“No. It's an odd sensation, but I'm used to it. And we need to communicate with the Arathim somehow. So I’ll do my part to help you find this crystal chunk or whatever.”

Naia kicked a rock and watched it roll down the pebbly slope towards the ledge below them. “I don’t actually know what I’m doing,” she said. “Mother Aughra told me to follow the ley lines but I don’t really know what they are or if I can find them." The rock teetered on the ledge before dropping off of the cliffside below. "I don’t like not knowing how to do something.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” said Amri, “because I know what ley lines are. They’re lines of power in the earth associated with veins of crystal that resonate with the Crystal of Truth. UrLii had me memorize that definition when I was a childling. And urLii also told me that one runs through Grot, although he never knew exactly where. I always assumed it was buried deep in the rock.”

“It is, I think?” said Naia, looking at the ground for more stones to kick. “I don’t know. I had one vision.” She found a good fist-sized rock, retracted her foot, and then sent it flying. This one cleared the ledge completely. 

“Well, Naia,” said Amri, watching the arc of the rock through the air, “in the past few days I’ve had my mind hijacked by a spider, I’ve lost my home, society as we know it has collapsed, the Skeksis have discovered how to suck out our life force and drink it, and if they don’t kill us, we’ll starve to death from the terrible blight that has befallen our land. So, you know, let’s just try this one thing the absent-minded woods-witch who’s been asleep for hundreds of years told us to do and hope she knew what she was talking about? What have we got to lose?”

“That was a terrible pep talk.”

“Right,” said Amri with a blush. “There’s a Gelfling-sized entrance to the caves this way. I used to use it to sneak up to the surface. It’s kind of tight. And it’s dark, so we should probably eat some of this,” he said, reaching into the narrow entryway and pulling out a handful of glowing moss, “before we go in.”

The Arathim Spitters passed them in rapid succession and squeezed into the caves, caring neither for the narrowness of the passage nor the dark. Naia was uncertain about crawling through the low tunnel, especially when there was clearly a much less constricted passage off to the left, a cavern-sized opening in the side of the mountain, large enough for their landstrider to shelter in.

“What about this one?” she asked.

“The passageway is filled with water once you get in. See the pond towards the back? Oh,” he said without taking a breath, “you don’t care about the water. You have gills.” _He sure says a lot of things out loud_ , Naia thought.

“I care about getting lost in the dark. What did you say about eating the moss?”

“Makes you glow,” he said, popping a piece in his mouth. Almost immediately his translucent skin began glowing blue. He handed her a piece.

“I don’t know if this will work. I’m a lot browner than you.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Naia put the handful of moss in her mouth and started chewing.

“Don’t chew!” Amri said. “It breaks down the bioluminescent components.”

“What?” Naia asked, her mouth full of moss.

“It makes it less glow-y.”

She did her best to swallow the mouthful of moss whole, then looked down at her hands. They glowed a little more green than blue, but enough to see by. “All right,” she said. “I’m going to give it a try. Wait here.”

Naia unbuttoned the two patches of leather on either side of her collar and bent them forward so that the gills on her neck and shoulders were exposed. She walked into the cave-water until it was up to her chest, and then spread out her wings, and dove down. In the green moss-glow, she followed the cave wall down until, in the depths, it opened up into a wide passage. Plenty of clearance. 

She made her way through to the other side. She was about to surface, when she felt a ripple through the water. A current. She found its source, a hole in the wall from which flowed fresh water, and she followed it to its exit, a hole in the wall on the other side of the pond. She went to the source and placed a hand on either side of the hole and, as she had during the ritual with Onica, went into the healing trance. In the soft glow, she saw the rock, and then the tiny grains that made up the rock, magnified, and then she saw beyond the grains, stripping away layers of rock with her mind until she found crystal, clear and free.

She broke the trance, emerged from the water, and, pausing shift her breathing from her gills to her lungs, climbed out of the pond. She saw a small slit of light ahead that must have been the smaller entrance where Amri was waiting. She made her way to it and called up.

“Are you there?”

“Yes?” His voice came echoing through the tunnel. “Are you alive? I was very nervous for a minute.”

“I found it,” she said.

“Yes, you found the entrance. You’re not dead. Like I was starting to worry you were. When you disappeared under the water and didn’t emerge for a very long time.”

“No, I mean, I think I found the ley line.”

“See?” he said. “I knew you knew what you were doing.” It was the kind of thing she would have expected him to say in his light, joking voice, but it sounded surprisingly sincere. “You have a general aura of competence,” he added.

“Can you lead the landstrider to the cave? It will have water there, and there are shrubs outside for it to graze on. I’ll wait for you here.”

Naia sat down to rest and looked down at her glowing hands, then back up at the entrance, and waited for Amri to return. It was only a few minutes before he came back, but she had kind of missed him when he was gone.

******

SkekZok insisted on a Ritual of Departure, and insisted that dusk and dawn were the only auspicious times for such an endeavor, and so as the Great Sun disappeared before the horizon, skekUng and skekTek stood outside the main gate of the castle, the Garthim between them, in preparation for the ceremony.

“The long dusk begins and so another day ends in the land of Thra,” spoke skekZok. “But the Skeksis are eternal. We do not fear the inevitable hand of change, for it does not fall upon us.” 

SkekUng had little need for ritual. And he was fairly certain that since he had last visited the castle the inevitable hand of change had indeed fallen upon his compatriots who dwelled there. But he did not question that rituals could create a sense of unity, and provide comfort to the less robust of their number. And so he tolerated it.

The ceremony ended. SkekUng and skekTek each mounted an armalig chariot. With a command to the Garthim to go south towards the border of the Wood and the Plains, skekUng lead the way, with skekTek trailing behind it. 

SkekUng found the open air rushing past his chariot invigorating. Indeed, his last few days in the castle had left him strangely fatigued. And yet, instead of running at full speed as he desired, he found himself frequently slowing to change direction as the Garthim kept wandering off course.

“It keeps veering northeast,” said skekUng, pulling his chariot next to Scientist’s. “Despite my lead.”

“I do not understand,” said skekTek. “It always submitted itself to my commands within the castle walls. Perhaps it is a failure after all.”

“The creature is not a failure,” said skekUng. “It will most likely prove a ruthless killing machine. We just do not understand it yet. Let us follow it and discover more of its nature.”

It was not quite dawn when they made it to the Black River, just north of Stone-in-the-Wood. Both Skeksis were stunned when the Garthim tried to plunge straight into the river, only for skekTek to give it a quick command to stop, at which point its glowing eyes went dark and it fell silent.

“Where is it going?" asked skekUng. "What’s across the river?”

“Aughra’s observatory, perhaps,” said skekTek. “Although what need it would have of either Aughra or an observatory perplexes me.”

“No,” said skekUng. He laughed. “It’s so simple. Domrak.” 

“Domrak,” said the Scientist. “Of course. The Arathim parts in it must be wandering home, by instinct. Friend skekUng has a natural understanding of the creature. It is felicitous that you returned to the castle so that we could join forces in this endeavor.”

“The fascinating question,” said skekUng, “is why the Arathim parts and not the Gruenak?”

“There could be many reasons,” said the Scientist. “Domrak is closer; the Gruenaks come from across the sea. Perhaps it will try to go to the sea next. Or perhaps the closer home has the stronger pull. Perhaps it depends on the individual Garthim.” 

“There are many possibilities,” said skekUng, “which you and I, my dear colleague, have the honor of exploring. There’s a bridge across the river upstream. Wide enough for all of us to make it across. Let’s take our friend across the river and see what happens.”


	6. (2.1) The Crystal Sings

Part 2.1: The Crystal Sings  
_Dispute over a chair. The wrong hum. Coming home. Escape on the river. Constantly forging ahead. Talking around a vow_.  
POVs: Deet, Rian, Deet, Gurjin, Amri, Aughra

******

They had waited until the night was pitch black before leaving Deet’s hiding place in the woods. Deet, fearful of doing more damage to the forest, launched herself off of Lore into the sky and flew several feet over the treetops. Her eyes, built for the dark, could make out the moving shapes of Rian, Gurjin, Hup, and Lore below. Thoughts of her friends, of how much they insisted that she not go alone, settled her spirit. But then she would look up towards the castle in the distance, its glowing windows standing out against the night, and she would feel the pull of the Crystal, and her heart would drop into her stomach again.

They moved swiftly through the night, with only a few hours of darkness before the dawn of the Great Sun. Rian and Gurjin had ridden a pair of landstriders through the woods, but had left them at the forest’s edge, since their bright white coloring would have stood out too clearly against the dark night. After hours of travel, they arrived at the castle with only a limited amount of time before dawn.

Deet landed softly, keeping a few yards between herself and her friends. “Well,” she said. “This is it.”

“Are you sure you can do this?” asked Rian.

“I have to do this,” she replied simply. “Please be safe. Stay in hiding until I find a way to banish the Skeksis from the Crystal Chamber. And if the shard doesn’t work, you must leave immediately. I can protect myself, but if you stay, the Skeksis will find you and drain you and I wouldn’t be able to stand that.”

“We can’t leave without…” 

“Stop,” said Deet, cutting off Rian. “You must leave without me. If they try to drain you, I don’t know what I will become capable of. And I don’t want to turn into that monster. Do you understand?”

Rian sighed. “Yes.”

“I know you’re worried. But you have to trust me.”

“I do. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry, Deet,” said Gurjin. “I’ll drag them both out kicking and screaming if I have to. Preferably not screaming, since that will make our escape that much more difficult, but I’ll get them out.”

“Thank you all for coming after me in the forest,” she said. “I had lost myself briefly for a while, but with your insistence, I think I’ve found me again.”

Deet turned toward the castle doors. The call of the Darkened Crystal that she’d been feeling since the day before tugged at her heart. She took a deep breath, and then, rooted in herself, she let the call of the Crystal wash over her entire being. In her mind, her last few days played backwards: Lore smashing through her cave, the day and night she had spent watching shadows cast by the changing skylights, her wanderings through the withering woods, the destruction of skekLach, the rage in her own heart the moment she had aimed the lethal blast. As she stood before the entrance to the castle, she felt the rush of the Darkening thicken in her veins to the point she thought they would burst and she heard the crackle of plasma as violet lightning danced in a shield around her body. And, as such, she entered the castle.

The shrieks of the Skeksis were piercing.

She encountered the first two in the hallway. Their cries were enough to rouse several more from their bedchambers, who, upon entering the hallway and seeing Deet, joined their friends in a whirling panic. She went on in this way, collecting Skeksis, until she reached the throne room. The Emperor, upon seeing Deet, walked calmly to his throne, but the remaining Skeksis cowered before her as she spoke. 

She looked at each one pointedly before she spoke. _Six_ , somewhere in her mind registered. _Two were killed in Stone-in-the-Wood, but shouldn’t there more than six left?_ Such thoughts were quickly set aside, as a voice, not her own, filled her mind and body, demanding to be heard. _Well, this is what I signed up for_ , thought Deet, and she allowed it.

“You have fed off our power for millennia,” the voice began. “We used to hate you for it. But you have filled us with a new power. For that, we are willing to let you live. If you are willing to obey.” With that, Deet walked slowly and surely towards the throne, and faced the Emperor.

“You’re sitting in our chair,” she said.

He rose to his full height, towering over the tiny Gelfling before him. Then, snarling, he moved out of her way and joined the others as Deet sat down upon the throne. The power of the Darkening within Deet pulsed in the muscles of her face and forced it into a smile. Her eyes glowed violet in the dim but rising light of dawn.

******

The dawn light was still dim, but Rian knew the castle by heart, and easily navigated its hallways. Deet’s plan was to lead the Skeksis to the throne room, and from the sounds of shrieking Skeksis coming from that direction, it sounded like she had succeeded. He took a detour that avoided that part of the castle completely as he led their party towards the Crystal Chamber, as discreetly as one possibly could when said party included a towering rock monster.

 _Trust Deet_. He trusted Deet. Seeing her ignite with the Darkening, sparks of energy twisting around her gentle arms and hands, had been beyond unsettling. But he had to trust her that she could control it. He did. He trusted Deet.

Two more corridors. Turn left, then left again.

“We’re here,” he said. There, in the center of the Chamber, hung the Crystal, suspended silently over a glowing pit leading down countless fathoms into the heart of Thra. The room was silent, still. 

“That Crystal?” whispered Hup. “Not so scary.”

Rian had to agree. The Crystal, although tinged a deep purple, seemed harmless in the quiet dawn, hardly the source of so much trouble. But then Rian turned towards Gurjin, who stood frozen by the entranceway, staring up at the Crystal while trying to swallow a look a dread, and any thoughts of harmlessness flew from his mind. _Oh Thra, they must have tried to drain him_ , Rian realized at once. Why hadn’t Gurjin told him? 

“I’m going to guard the door,” said Gurjin. 

“All right,” said Rian, a hand to his friend’s shoulder. “It’s almost over.”

“I hope so,” Gurjin replied.

From the throne room, came the renewed shrieks of Skeksis, and a crackle of Darkened energy. Right. Time to hurry. 

With a cue to Lore, Rian positioned himself in front of the Crystal. Then he felt the cool smoothness of Lore’s rock-arms, as the creature, with a delicate grace, lifted Rian over the pit and placed him gently atop the Crystal. 

The Crystal was surprisingly cool, cooler than Lore had been. It was a lot harder to hold onto than Lore, too. Rian spread his arms and legs out wide, and tried not to look down into the fiery, nigh-endless pit below. With one hand, he gently probed the surface of the Crystal, trying to locate the fracture. 

And then, a hum. So deep, Rian felt it in his stomach. He felt sick.

“Did you hear that?” Rian asked in a loud whisper.

“Hear what?” asked Gurjin, as Hup shook his head.

“A humming.”

“The Crystal’s supposed to hum, isn’t it?” said Gurjin. “Remember, Mother Aughra said that it has a song, but it’s Darkened now. That’s why she sent Naia to Grot.”

“Right,” said Rian. His left hand finally found the crack where the missing shard belonged. His left hand firmly gripping the fissure, Rian reached into his coat pocket and removed the shard. And then, again, a hum deep enough to make him nauseous. _Ignore it_ , thought Rian. _We’re so close_.

And with that, Rian carefully placed the shard into the cracked Crystal of Truth. The shard fell effortlessly into position, its edges slipping from his fingers and lining up perfectly with the surface. The Crystal began to hum again, but higher this time, and then, from deep within its core, it began to glow. _It’s going to work_ , thought Rian. The violet glow in the center of the Crystal began to intensify and radiate outward.

“Something’s wrong,” he heard Gurjin say from across the room.

“No, it’s fine,” said Rian. 

The humming grew louder and more piercing. Gurjin turned his back to Rian and the Crystal and knelt on the floor, looking ill. _Maybe something is wrong_ , thought Rian, the sick feeling returning to his stomach. “Lore, get me dow…” he began, shouting over the hum. Before he could finish, the Crystal shook violently, throwing him off towards the fiery pit below.

Lore’s rock arm shot out and managed to knock Rian to the side before he fell into the pit, but the angle was odd, and Rian went crashing into one of the stone columns that lined the room. He heard a crunch of bone as he hit it.

Sprawled out on the floor, Rian assessed the situation. His leg was injured. The Crystal trembled as the hum grew more and more high-pitched. Gurjin still knelt, motionless. Rian dragged himself over to his friend. 

“Are you okay…” he cut off with a gasp as Gurin’s eyes looked up at him blank and white, like Mira’s had when she had been drained. 

“Something’s wrong,” Gurjin repeated. The hum of the Crystal whinged in Rian’s ears. The glow of violet light exploded in a ring of Darkened energy that shot through the palace. The shard flew out of its slot and landed with a ringing clang on the floor.

And then, it was over. The ring of Darkened energy seemed to suck itself back into the Crystal, which fell silent again. Gurjin’s eyes slowly returned to normal. Hup walked over and picked up the fallen shard. And then, from afar, agitated shrieks of the Skeksis.

“We have to get out of here,” Gurjin said. 

“We have to tell Deet what happened.”

“Rian you can't even walk and the Skeksis will be here any second.”

“We’ll sneak into the musician’s balcony and signal to her from here. Just to let her know that it didn’t work. Help me. Please.”

“All right,” said Gurjin, picking Rian up from the floor. “We’ll go. But Lore goes first.”

******

The instant that shard slipped into the Crystal, a low murmur began in Deet’s throat. Slowly, it built into an audible groan.

“What is it doing?” a Skeksis whispered to a fellow.

Deet felt an uncontrollable rage roil up from her belly, and behind that rage, prodding it forward, fear, and behind the fear, confusion. Suddenly, she felt herself, her real self, the one who used to feed bits of glow moss to baby nurlocs, plunge into a cold, wet dimness, as if she had sunk to the bottom of the sea. Above, as if through a watery gulf, a creature that looked exactly like her radiated flashes of violet plasma in greater frequency, its eyes glowing like the Darkened Crystal itself.

“Let us be!” screamed Deet’s body, in a voice not her own.

And then, a ring of violet light radiated through the throne room. 

“We must go to the Crystal Chamber at once,” the real Deet heard one of the Skeksis shout, muffled as if through water. “Someone must be tampering with the Crystal.”

A burst of memory flashed through Deet’s mind. _Rian_ , she thought. _They mustn’t find Rian and the others. I am in control_. Through the watery gulf of her mind, the early morning light filtered down from her eyes. She focused on the light and reached out one arm, then another, as if swimming up towards it. She pushed a phantom arm into the outline of her own arm, and then the other, as if swimming back into her own body, feeling the cold water evaporate away and the warmth come back into her flesh. The violet light dropped out of her eyes, the lightning crackling from her body fizzled into the atmosphere and was gone. 

“No,” yelled Deet, but this time it was her own voice, tinged with gentleness, even in fear.

One by one, the six Skeksis stopped their panicked ambulations and turned to face Deet. 

“It no longer glows,” said one.

“It no longer snarls,” said another.

A cruel smile came upon the the Emperor’s face. “SkekZok, skekSil, go check the Crystal. Make sure you are armed. The rest of us will deal with this one.” He loomed over Deet, three times her size, so close that she could smell the mustiness of the ancient, faded fabric draped around his twisted gray body. _Please, Rian. Take the others and get out of here_. 

The Emperor reached out a long, thin hand, placed it around her neck, and began to squeeze. 

Deet felt the Darkened One swell up again inside of her. It would be so easy to give in, to destroy the Emperor like she had SkekLach, and if leagues away an urRu died too, well, maybe she wouldn’t think about it too much. _If the urRu were so good, they would save the Gelfling_ , came the voice inside her.

Violet sparks crackled across her left hand. She raised it to the Emperor’s chest and sent out a shock of Darkened energy that reverberated through his body. The Emperor shook once and dropped her, snarling and clutching his chest where she had wounded him. Deet fell to the ground, clutching her throat. 

“Go ahead,” he said, when he had recovered from the blast well enough to speak. “Kill me, if you can. But I know you’re nothing more than a little girl who fears the power inside of her.” 

_You’re wrong_ , she thought, kneeling on the hard floor of the throne room as the Emperor towered over her. _I am a murderer_. She looked down at the violet veins pulsating in her hands, snarled, and raised them. 

It was at that moment that Lore came trampling in and knocked the Emperor clear across the throne room, leaving the shock of Darkened energy from Deet’s hands to blast a hole through the window on the far wall. A gust of cold dawn air rushed into the throne room and rustled through her hair, cooling her and calming her spirit. 

“What is that monstrosity?” screeched a Skeksis as Lore reached down to help Deet up.

“Mere stone,” said another one, skeptically.

Out of the corner of her eye, Deet caught movement in the balcony. Rian. Even though the Skeksis were distracted by Lore, Deet quickly averted her eyes from the balcony in order to avoid arousing their suspicion. 

“This is my protector,” said Deet, as Lore lumbered from Skeksis to Skeksis, orienting his head towards their faces. “Fashioned by the two halves of GraGoh.”

At this, the laments of the Skeksis increased.

“Heretic,” spat one.

“Disgusting Heretic spending his days with that urRu. That _abomination_.”

With the Skeksis distracted, Deet spared a moment to look back up at the balcony. Rian held the crystal shard, flat across his palm. He shook his head. _It didn’t work_ , thought Deet.

“What does it look at?” The Emperor, who had righted himself while the others were distracted, turned his head toward the balcony.

And just like that, Deet was lost again. She crackled and shone violet on the Emperor’s throne.

“We will look where we please,” she screeched. “And you will obey us.” With a sweep of her hand, she shot an arc of lightning across the floor in front her. One by one, the Skeksis shrieked and hopped out of its way.

“Will we never be rid of it?” cried one of the Skeksis.

“Rid of us?” said Deet in the voice not her own. “This is our home. And here is where we will stay.”

By the time Deet looked up at the balcony again, Rian was gone. The Skeksis remained cowering in the back of the throne room, whispering schemes to each other about how to uproot her from the throne, each of which was met with a crackle of lightning or the pounding of Lore’s fist upon the floor. By the time the Rose Sun had risen to join the Great Sun, Deet knew that Rian and the others had had enough time to escape. 

Eventually, the six Skeksis sullenly gave up their plots, and retreated from the throne room. Finally, Deet could rest. But she couldn't leave the castle. As the fear for her friends subsided, so too did the spirit of the Darkening subside within her, although it still remained, lurking, waiting for its chance to rise again. She had failed again, given in to murder. The only reason the Emperor had lived was because Lore had gotten to him first. She needed to stay until she knew for certain that she could be in control, and if that meant staying forever, then so be it. Exhausted by the long night and long morning, with Lore standing guard over her, she fell asleep on the throne of the Castle of the Crystal.

And so she did not see the seventh Skeksis as she peeked into the throne room, smirked, and made her way to the others to tell them her plan. 

******

Gurjin broke the healing trance and his mind drifted back to the waking world, around a campfire in the woods. He couldn’t completely mend Rian’s broken leg, but he had managed to sort out the bruising, and whenever they stopped to rest he tried to clean up any small fractures that appeared after their hours of trampling through the forest. It had been several days since they had fled the castle, but Rian couldn’t ride a landstrider with his leg in a splint, nor he could walk very fast, and so the three of them were currently camping by the Black River, a league or so north of Stone-in-the-Wood, still several days’ journey from Ha’rar. 

“How does the leg feel?” he asked Rian.

“Better than yesterday,” he replied. “Thanks to you.”

“I’m just doing damage control. If I could actually heal it we’d be in Ha’rar by now.” Gurjin threw another log on the fire. “You should get some sleep. Like him.” He indicated Hup, who was snoring gently by the fire. 

“Yeah,” said Rian, leaning back against a tree and staring up at the stars, deep in thought. Not sleeping. Gurjin often saw Rian staring into nothing, and he knew him well enough to know that he was thinking about Deet, or about Mira, or his father, or one of the many, many other people who had died. And while Gurjin was sympathetic, Rian needed to do a little less thinking about those things, or he was going to make himself sick.

“Whatever you’re thinking about, it can’t be more important than a good night’s sleep,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell me the Skeksis tried to drain you?” 

“What?” _Where did that come from?_

“In the castle,” continued Rian, “when the Crystal rejected the shard, your eyes turned white, like Mira’s did when they drained her.”

Gurjin picked up a stick and began poking at the fire. “It must have just been some weird side-effect of that energy wave or whatever.”

“It didn’t happen to me or to Hup,” Rian said. “It happened to you, though. Because it had already drained you before. You were still connected to the Crystal somehow.”

“Okay, fine. They tried to drain me a little bit. But I’m fine now.”

Rian shook his head. “I didn’t even ask. You sacrificed yourself for me and I just assumed that you were okay.”

 _He’s blaming himself_ , thought Gurjin. _Of course he is_. It was endearing, but also a kind of annoying. 

“First of all,” Gurjin began, “don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t sacrifice myself for you, I did it for Mira. Second of all, I’m fine. So don’t worry.”

“I’ll worry if I want to worry. Does anybody else know?”

“I told Naia,” said Gurjin, breaking up the stick and tossing it into the fire. “She had to heal the… nevermind. And my parents know.”

“I should have asked,” said Rian, watching as the stick burnt up in the flames. “I was so preoccupied with Deet and everything after the battle, I didn’t pay enough attention to everyone else.”

Gurjin scooted over to his friend’s side. “I need you to listen. If I had needed to tell you, I would have. I went through it with my sister because I needed to go through it with someone. But that was enough. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to remember it. I just want to move on.”

Rian leaned his head on Gurjin’s shoulder. “And how do we move on?”

“I don’t know. I thought healing the Crystal might do it. But that didn’t work, so now we just have to hope that whatever Naia and them are doing will work instead.”

“Yeah, okay.” Rian continued to stare at the fire, still not sleeping. Gurjin began to think that there were multiple dimensions to his concerns about moving on.

“It’s okay if you’re in love with her, you know,” he said.

“We’ve only known each other for a few weeks. I can’t be in love with her.”

“Yet you knew exactly who I was talking about. Interesting.”

“We’re just friends.”

“I know, but like, I, personally, am concerned about her well-being, as a friend, and for the well-being of all my friends, but you seem to be taking the concern to a whole new level.”

“We just went through a lot together over the course of a week, and it was all very emotionally intense, and I owe it to her to make sure that she comes out of this safe.”

“Fine. I’m just saying you’re allowed to be in love with her.”

“I’m not asking your permission.”

“I’m not giving you my permission. Well, I am. But you know what I mean.”

“What, you’re telling me that it’s okay that right after my girlfriend is horribly murdered I literally fall in love with the next woman I meet?”

“Rian,” Gurjin began, trying to figure out what to say next without completely messing it up. “I don’t know about you, but before this all started, I was still basically a child. Actually, I do know about you, and you were a child too. We were all children. And now we’re not.”

“So what?”

“All I’m saying, is that over the past couple of weeks, you and me have changed. A lot. And the rotten thing is that Mira doesn’t get to change anymore.”

“I don’t…”

“And that's the worst. I hate it. It makes me so angry that I want to go back into that castle and start stabbing Skeksis until one of them finally finishes me off. But it’s still true. If she had lived, maybe you two would have changed together and grown up together, but maybe not.”

“You think I would have broken up with her?”

“Oh, no. If it came down to it, she would definitely have broken up with you.”

“That’s true.” It was the first time he had seen Rian smile when talking about her, although the smile was soon joined by a tear or two. Gurjin put his arm around his friend’s shoulder and held him close. 

“I’m not in love with Deet,” Rian said after a while. “But I think I could be someday.”

“Good.” 

“It’s been such a long day.”

“You should definitely go to sleep then, because I am waking you up for your watch as soon as the Second Sister rises. No mercy.”

“Such a touching display of friendship,” said a voice from the darkness. “Do such bonds of amity exist among mere Gelfling?”

Gurjin immediately recognized the voice. A Skeksis. How? If the Skeksis had noticed them sneaking around in the castle, they would have pursued them immediately and caught up with them days ago. Gurjin gently kicked Hup awake.

“What a pleasant surprise,” said the Skeksis. “Here I am, searching for new _faithful_ Podling servants, ones who don’t run away for no good reason, when I see a campfire in the distance and manage to find what have to be the only two Gelfling left between the Plains and Ha’rar.” Hup, still groggy, sat up. His eyes widened when they fell upon the Skeksis. “Oh! And a Podling as well! How fortunate.” The Skeksis loomed closer. 

They didn’t have time to waste. Gurjin picked up Rian and threw him over his shoulder, then grabbed Hup and placed him on the other one, and ran into the darkness. _Just have to find a place to hide_. He stumbled over a tree root but managed to keep his balance. _Running in the dark is a terrible idea_. He heard the sound of the river ahead. The river. Perfect. They’d hide in the river. _No, Rian and Hup will drown in the river_ , he reminded himself. 

“Rian, can you swim with your leg?”

“Not very fast.”

“Hup, can you swim at all?”

“So so.”

“Can you swim across this?” he asked, gesturing at the river with is rapid current.

Hup shook his head no.

“All right, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to plunge us into the river. Hup, you will sit on my back. Rian you will grab onto my ankles. I will get us across.”

“Skeksis swim?”

“I have no idea. But if we don’t get across the river, we’re dead.” He took a step back and prepared for a running start. The further distance he could cover in the jump, the less they’d have to swim. He shifted his weight to his back foot, and prepared to spring forward, when another voice came out of the darkness.

“SkekZok. What are you doing at the Black River in the middle of the night?”

Another Skeksis. On the river. In a boat. _Why? Where are they all coming from?_ Then, against all expectations, the new Skeksis leapt from the side of the boat onto the shore and stood between Gurjin and his pursuer.

“SkekSa," said the first Skeksis, skekZok, apparently, "What are you doing so far from the sea?”

“I returned home after weeks sailing the Silver Sea to find that my beloved Sifa will barely even speak to me. After hundreds of trine of living together in mutual affection, they fear and tremble at the sight of me. I find out from them that you fools at the castle have been killing Gelfling for sport.”

“Not for sport, dear Mariner. For _essence_.”

“What nonsense. We Skeksis are immortal. We need not _imbibe_ from the Gelfling to live. But I do appreciate their companionship. And your foolishness has taken that from me. So I am on my way to the castle to tell you what idiots you all are.”

“Dear Mariner, if you were to but try a taste of essence…”

“Disgusting. I will do no such thing. Is that why you are after these two here? To drink their ‘essence’? What about the Podling? You going to drink his essence too?”

“SkekSa. Despite our long trine of friendship, we obviously have a difference of opinion on this matter. But neither of these Gelfling are among your little Sifa pets, so what is it to you if I take them back to the castle?”

“You there,” skekSa said, pointing at Gurjin. “The burly one, obviously. Cuddling the other two. What’s your name?”

“Why should I tell you…”

The Skeksis sighed in impatience. “No time for this. Get on the boat, Drenchen.”

“What?” _Who is this person?_

“I’m trying to help you and your friends. Get on the boat.”

“Rian are you okay with this?” Gurjin asked.

“It does seem like the less-bad choice at the moment.”

“Hup?”

Hup shrugged. 

“What are you worried for, Drenchen? If I try to come at you, you can always swim away with your friends in tow. You’ll be no worse off than before.”

Gurjin waded knee-deep into the river and placed first Rian, then Hup on the railing of the boat before climbing in himself. 

“SkekSa, this camaraderie with the Gelfling is off-putting.”

“It’s less camaraderie with the Gelfling than disgust with the Skeksis. I will not be party to your grotesque drainings.” And with that, skekSa re-boarded the boat, pulled up the anchor, grabbed a pole, and pushed them towards the center of the river.

“Grab a pole, Drenchen,” she said. “The current’s strong enough but the faster we get away from my disturbed colleague, the better.” Gurjin found a row of Gelfling-sized poles and joined skekSa at the side of the boat. 

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Gurjin looked at Rian. Rian kept his gaze for a moment and then shrugged.

“Ha’rar,” said Rian.

“I’ll take you there. I need to get back to the Silver Sea. Berating the Ritual Master was enough to satisfy my anger for now. Going to the castle will be a waste of time. I hate everyone there.”

******

Over a week had passed since Amri and Naia had arrived on the far side of the mountains that he had, until very recently, called home. Each day, the two of them, plus his Threader, ventured out into the tunnels, doing their best to follow the crystal vein that Naia had found, but it forked off into different branches and twisted into dead-ends, and sometimes became buried so deeply in the rock that it was impossible to follow. And so their progress was slow. 

They had set up base in the Tomb of Relics, which he had spent hour after hour exploring in his old life, often coming across urLii, who would take the time to lecture him on whatever book or treasure he happened to be examining at the moment. One morning when he had awoken, Amri had even fallen automatically back into his old routine—washing up at the stream that cut through the second chamber from the entrance, grabbing a handful of moss and mushrooms to cook for breakfast, selecting one of the books randomly stacked on the shelves to read while waiting—before bumping into a newly-awoken Naia and remembering that everything had changed and that the tunnels that led west to Domrak village had all been collapsed by the Spitters so that the Darkened creatures that raged within his old home could not penetrate the Tomb. And that urLii was nowhere to be found.

Not that bumping into Naia every morning was a bad thing. Being with Naia wasn’t exactly enough to make up for the loss of his ancestral home—if asked, he would have preferred to have met her under other circumstances—but it kind of made things easier. She was always focused on the next step, on deciding which tunnel to explore next, on figuring out how to plow ahead even when their path was blocked by a pile of rubble or, say, a gaping chasm that Amri himself probably would not have attempted to cross in a million trine but which Naia had flung them across _before_ mentioning, mid-leap, that Drenchen wings worked better in the water than in air but would at the very least help soften their landing if they made it to the other side, which, to her credit, they did. All of her constant forging ahead proved a good distraction from, you know, the loss of everything he had ever known.

Which is why, now, exploring a tunnel that had gradually narrowed to the width of the underground stream that filled it, as they continued forth in the water up to their chests until the path became completely blocked by rock wall, Amri knew exactly what would happen next, but, for formality’s sake, he tried to reason with her. 

“We should probably test it before…”

Amri’s words were cut off as Naia dove down into the water and stayed under for that unnerving amount of time she always stayed under before popping back up.

“There’s an underwater tunnel. I can make it through,” she said.

“Yeah, I know, I mean, I always believe in your ability to swim through things, but the question is what is on the other side.”

“Only one way to find out.” She patted him gently on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” And with that, she plunged back into the water, beat her wings once, and disappeared into the passage.

“I sure hope she doesn’t die,” Amri said to Karlak, perched on his shoulder. “Again. Again I hope that.”

Karlak said nothing.

“Amri you have to see this, it’s amazing,” she said, surfacing at last.

“Will I drown?”

“No, you won’t drown, I… oh, actually, how long can you hold your breath?”

“I dunno, like a minute?”

“That’s plenty of time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, just grab onto my ankles, I’ll get us through in half a minute, I promise.”

“What about Karlak?”

Karlak jumped off of Amri’s shoulder onto the wall blocking the way forward. He scuttled around for a minute, before finding a crevice, gently testing it with a probing arm or two, and then squeezing himself through.

“See, we could have just sent the spider first, and…”

“Come _on_.”

They emerged in a very small pool where the water gathered briefly before plunging down a vertical drop to the cavern floor far below. A few extra strokes forward and they would have swum right over the edge. 

“That was close,” Amri began, preparing to make a witty comment about their near-death, when he raised his eyes to look into the cavern below.

At first, he saw only a vast haze of blue light filling the space, as far as his eyes could see. And then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw it—clear, unDarkened crystal, everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, spiking upwards from the floor.

“Found it,” said Naia, walking towards the side of the pool. Over the ledge, the rock led down to the chamber floor, steep, but climable. Karlak scuttled back onto Amri’s shoulder and they made their way down.

“So now what?” asked Amri.

“Mother Aughra’s exact words were ‘Find a Grottan. They’re good at listening to rocks.’”

“Well, that is not very specific.”

“We’re supposed to hear its song. Whatever that means.”

“I mean, rocks vibrate. And sound is vibration. UrLii taught me that. But what do we do with the song when we find it?”

“I guess we go back to Ha’rar and you can dreamfast with Kylan so he can hear it and play it or write it down, or whatever musicians do?”

“So I have to listen to one of these stalagmites. A big one.”

“If a stalagmite is a big pointy piece of crystal coming out of the ground, then yes.”

“All right.” He chose a spike of crystal rising out of the floor to twice his height, and placed his hands upon it. He gazed into its gentle blue light, closed his eyes, put an ear to the cool, smooth surface. 

The crystal spike hummed, as he expected. But the hum was low, and even to his Grottan ears, difficult to hear as a song. He tried to find a pattern in the noise, listening for repetitions of pitch or loudness. A pulse, louder than the others, a low hum, another pulse, but the pattern was erratic. A pulse, a humming, a pulse, and his thoughts drifted against his will to the low sounds of the rocks under his head as he slept in his bed back at home, in Domrak village. He was young; his parents were still alive. He heard the hum of their speech to each other in his half-conscious state. And then, he was seeing shapes, regular shapes with six sides, made up of six triangles, lines of light that quivered in the blue light and emitted, at regular intervals, sound.

It was then that Amri realized he had entered some kind of dreamfast with the stone itself, and, if he concentrated, he could, in fact, hear tones like notes. One, and then another, but then he heard another noise, a whirring sound that started out quiet and grew louder and louder until it blotted out the song of the crystal. The vibrating lines of light grew dimmer and dimmer, the blue light faded to violet. The whirring noise grew so loud that it hurt his ears, and he tried to break the dreamfast with the crystal.

But the crystal wouldn’t let go.

******

The Sisters had set and the night was lit only by stars when Aughra, the first and the last of her name, pulled herself up over one final rock to the top of the Circle of the Suns. Sprawled on her back, panting for breath, she let her gaze drift to the endless sky above her, her ancient wandering grounds. 

“I miss you, old friends,” she said to the stars. “But when I start with you, I can’t quit you. Now is not the time for Aughra to lose herself in the sky.” Aughra righted herself, winced as her knee joints jostled each other in their sockets, and slowly snuck her way towards the ragged curtain that served as a door.

“Look at this mess,” she said as she tutted around the room, grabbing a paintbrush here, a wooden fruit bowl there, tossing them both over her shoulder. At last, she found a metal ladle and a rack of pots and pans.

“Found you!” said Aughra, clanging a pan repeatedly with the ladle. “Come on, wake up! You have a guest.”

A voice came from behind a curtain. “Why do we even have those pots and pans?” SkekGra pushed himself through the curtain with a weary gravity and stumbled dramatically over to the rack. “I’m going to throw them over the edge,” he said.

“We…use…them…for…”

“Cooking, yes I know. I know. I was just trying to make a point. What do you want, Aughra?”

“What have you two been up to without me?”

“Nothing. Can’t tell you. We took a vow.”

“How did you find that shard?”

“Vow!”

Aughra grumbled. “In the midst of a very long walk here, across the crystal sands…”

“How did you manage that, by the way?”

“I am Aughra. No place on Thra is closed to me,” she said. “Now where was I? Ah, yes. Several days ago, in the midst of a very long walk here across the crystal sands, an angry energy flew through the sky from the castle and pierced my heart before retreating again. Did you feel it?” She waved the ladle at skekGra.

“No. I have not felt any angry energies recently, other than my own, at being rudely awakened in the middle of the night.”

“You?” Aughra asked, pointing at urGoh.

“No…I…did…”

“Yes, yes,” said Aughra, cutting him off. “See? Looks like Aughra still knows a few things that you two don’t. It didn’t work. The Crystal rejected the shard.”

“Yes…that’s…fine,” said urGoh, as mellow as always.

“They still haven’t solved all of the puzzles,” said skekGra, folding all four of his arms in a smug fashion. 

“What puzzles?” asked Aughra. “You mean, like the one you left for the Vapran princess to find? With your little rock-man?”

“First of all, we didn’t leave it specifically for her to find. Anyone could have found it. Could have found it a lot sooner too. What took them so long? Second of all, he’s a relatively large rock-man. And third of all, his name is Lore.”

“Yes, Lore. He came to Stone-in-the-Wood, you know. With the Podling, Hup.”

“Don’t care about the Podling. Noisy Podling.” 

“Ha, what’s that look on your face then?”

“Fine, I care about the Podling a little bit! I’m glad he’s okay. Are you happy now?”

“The…others…,” began urGoh, “the…Gelfling…”

“Rian is fine. Brea is fine. Deet has turned into some sort of living embodiment of the Darkening, but, I don’t know, she and her friends seem to be managing it well enough. Of course, they were the ones who went to replace the shard in the Crystal, so since that didn’t work maybe they’re all dead now. If so, it’s your fault for coming up with obscure quests instead of just telling everyone what to do.”

“The… quests… are… necessary. The… clans… must… come together.”

“And then what?”

“We… only know… so much. The rest… must come… from the Gelfling… themselves.”

“But they need to find the other clues first,” said skekGra. “That’s what you-know-who said. You know. The vow person.”

“Yes, yes,” said Aughra, “the vow person. And what kind of clues was this vow person referring to?"

“There’s another puzzle, in the book. The instructions are there, if the Gelfling join together. It will take members of different clans, learning to work together to use dreamspace in new ways.”

“The visions,” said Aughra. “I knew it.”

“What visions?”

“Ha! More things that Aughra knows that you do not.” Aughra told them of the Gelfling in Stone-in-the-Wood who had joined together and opened a pocket in dreamspace in order to reunite a family.

“Interesting. So that is how they came to the visions? On their own?”

“See? The key…is the…Gelfling…coming together.”

“Yes, but Gelfling from only three different clans?” asked skekGra.

“Four, if you include the Vapran sisters.”

“Then the hints will be less clear than they might have been. But perhaps still enough.”

“The Gelfling…will have to… unite…in the end.”

“Yes, yes,” said skekGra, “Unity has always been the key.”

“You two are too secretive. I don’t like it.”

UrGoh spoke. “We have secrets that we cannot share. Not even with Aughra. But I swear to you, our goal is the same as yours. To heal the Crystal, and to go home, and to send all of our brothers and sisters home as well.” 

Aughra looked outside. Her beloved stars were fading, but the first Sun had yet to rise over the Crystal Sea. She raised a hand to frame three fading stars, and dreamt of flying among them.

Far away to the east, a hand reached out from the depths of the earth, and framed the same three stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are now in Part 2! Hooray! This chapter was mostly in the castle, the next one mostly in Ha'rar, and the one after that mostly at Grot. Then onward to Part 3.
> 
> Also, I accidentally posted this one early because I am bad at clicking on the right thing. I will go back to posting on Mondays next week.


	7. (2.2) A Light on the Sea

Part 2.2: A Light on the Sea  
_Actual interesting things. Adjusting the tuning. Just the memory of a song. Things you can't hear. A lesson in tent etiquette._  
POVs: Brea, Kylan, Brea, Kylan, Onica

******

Brea’s last meeting of the day was ostensibly about how and when to move the excess crop stores to Wellspring, but turned out to actually be about how much the head of the Grains Guild hated the head of the Tubers Guild and vice versa. By the time the meeting ended, the Suns had long set and the First Sister was halfway up the sky. And so she stomped herself into the library with a dramatic groan, hours behind schedule, plopped herself in a chair and picked up the first book in front of her.

“What is this?” she asked.

“ _Record of the Songs of the Woodland Folk_ ,” said Kylan from the table across from her, not looking up from the page he was currently examining.

“Yes, I can read the cover,” she said, then cringed at her own tone. “Sorry.”

“I take it you did not enjoy your meeting?”

“Do I ever? But it’s my duty,” she reminded herself. “I have inherited a place of privilege and I am going to do my duty. Even if it’s so, so boring.” 

“You look exhausted. I found some interesting things today, but nothing urgent. We can go over it in the morning.” Every day after her endless parade of meetings she came up to the library to hear about the actual interesting things that Kylan had found in the course of helping the Librarian organize the stacks, information about the Crystal, the castle, the shard, anything relevant to their current quest. 

“No, I’m not tired,” she said, yawning and putting her head on the table. “All right, that’s a lie, but books are my only happiness these days. Please do not take away my only happiness.” He smiled and picked up the volume he was reading. _And don’t smile at me like that or I will not be able to concentrate on the books either_.

“…here and here,” he said, pointing to pictures in two of the books.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“The pictures of Gyr.”

“Gyr…he was an ancient song-teller, right?”

“Yes, there are dozens songs attributed to him, although not all of them survive. He’s supposed to have been born almost a thousand trine ago, at the end of the Age of Harmony. But we don’t really know much more about him. He may not have even existed, or even written all of those songs if he did. ‘Gyr’ just might be an epithet that various ancient song-tellers adopted.” 

Brea focused on the picture of Gyr on the page he was holding up. “Hold on,” she said, leaning halfway across the table to get a closer look. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a pendant around Gyr’s neck.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you about,” he said, gently pushing her back into her seat and placing the book in front of her. 

“It’s the spiral,” she said, as he placed another book down next to the first. “The one from the vision.”

“Yes,” he said. “And he’s wearing it in this book as well. And in these.” He gestured to the two remaining books on the table. 

“So Gyr was always drawn with this spiral symbol?”

“No. Look the first one you picked up. _Record of the Songs of the Woodland Folk_.”

“No spiral.”

“No spiral.”

“What does it mean?” she muttered to herself, bringing her nose close to the page. Maybe the spiral was hidden somewhere else in the image. If only she had a magnifying glass…

“Look at the date,” said Kylan as he watched her search the page for clues. She flipped to the first page. 

“This was written over eight hundred trine ago.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s the oldest of these five books by over three hundred trine or so. This is the next-oldest, I think,” he said, indicating a volume bound in dark brown leather. “The date isn’t recorded anywhere, but I haven’t found references to any events that happened less than five hundred trine ago.”

Brea reached for the book and he handed it to her. “So based on the evidence so far, up until about five hundred trine ago, Gyr was never drawn with a spiral pendant…”

“…and then for some reason, he was.”

“Fascinating,” said Brea, slumping over the book as weariness took over her body. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” replied Kylan. “But my eyes are tired, and you, once again, seem exhausted, so maybe we should close up for tonight and try again tomorrow.”

“No, I want to read this,” said Brea, desperately clutching the book beneath her head. “I want to see if I can date it more specifically. If you’re done with it.”

“I’m done with it,” said Kylan. “Just don’t fall asleep on the books. Again.”

“I won’t fall asleep,” she said, flipping through the pages until she found a chapter with what appeared to be a series of dates. She folded her arms and placed her chin on them and began to read.

An uncertain amount of time later, Brea bolted upright with a start. “I’m not asleep,” she said. She reached down to pick up the book from the table, only to find her cloak, folded neatly into a square. “Where is it?” she asked, briefly panicking that she had somehow lost an irreplaceable five-hundred-trine-old volume.

Kylan smiled from where he sat by the window and pointed to the five books, neatly stacked in a pile with an array of cloth bookmarks peeking out of the bottoms from the key pages. “I replaced it with your cloak when you were, you know, not asleep. The Librarian gets fussy when you get drool all over his ancient texts.”

Brea put a hand to the corner of her mouth and gently wiped. “Fair enough,” she said. She stood and joined him by the window. The First Sister was not that much higher in the sky than when she had arrived, so she couldn’t have slept for very long.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“I’m just listening to that music. Is it the Sifa? I know they play on the beach every night, but they’re all the way on the shore on the other side of the mountains.”

“Ah, yes. The way the Library is situated on the hill and the way the mountains line up between here and sea amplifies the acoustics so that it sounds like they’re right outside.” 

"I played with them a couple of nights ago," he said. "But it's so cold here at night and the wind off the sea was so strong that I thought I was going to freeze to death." A slight breeze came in through the window, and he pulled his cloak more tightly around himself. “How do you live like this?”

“It’s not even the cold season yet,” she laughed, wrapping her cloak around his shoulders. “I only really have the cloak for style purposes. But I understand. I was sweltering all the time when we were in Stone-in-the-Wood.” After draping the cloak, she didn’t feel like letting go of him, so she didn’t. He absent-mindedly placed a hand on her lower back, beneath the joint where her wings met her spine, but kept staring out of the window.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Brea had resolved to pay more attention to the needs of others, and although she was still working on it, she could hear the distraction in his voice now. Plus over the past week or so in Ha'rar, his answer to _what’s wrong_ had always been _nothing_ , which couldn’t possibly be true all of the time. 

“That’s not fair,” she said, trying to keep a lightness in her voice even as she reasoned with him. “You’re always helping me work through all of my emotional issues, but then whenever you’re upset about something you close up and don’t tell me anything. It’s not an even exchange.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said again. “There’s just something sad about the music.”

“Really? It sounds fairly exuberant to me.” She felt him shiver again, and tightened her arms around him. “You should get some warmer clothing,” she said.

“I don’t like going into shops. I stand out.”

“I can go for you.”

“Is it normal for a princess to walk into a shop and buy men’s clothing?”

“They’ll just assume it’s for some sort of official business. People don’t speculate about that sort of thing, do they?”

He laughed. “They definitely do. I can just ask the Librarian to go for me.”

“No, don’t do that. He’ll buy you _old people_ clothes.”

“All right, I’ll go myself tomorrow," he said. "I should get used to standing out anyway.” 

“If you’re homesick, you can tell me.”

“I think being homesick means that you want to go home. Which I don’t. Ever.” His arm tightened around her waist as he started absent-mindedly humming along with the music. “It’s very loud, isn’t it?”

“It’s mostly due to the acoustic effect, but yes. The Librarian always complains about it whenever the Sifa are in town. Of course he has his own weird complicated thing with the Sifa that he refuses to tell me about.” She felt herself getting drowsy again as he continued to hum. He was right about the music—the way he was humming it at least it sounded quiet and sad. He moved one of his hands to her hair and she felt herself almost falling asleep again.

“Sorry, we shouldn’t do this,” he said suddenly, pushing her away.

“Do what?”

“This,” he said, vaguely miming hugging the air.

“Oh,” she said, backing away. She had thought she had been reading the situation between them fairly well but apparently she had been mistaken. “Why not?”

“You’re not going to like the reason,” he said, straightening the already-straight books on the table.

She could think of two main reasons, and decided to get the worse of the two out of the way first. “Is it because you don’t feel that way about me and I just made a big fool out of myself?”

“No. Of course that’s not it.”

“Well, that’s a relief at least,” she said. _So it’s the other one then_. “Is it because I’m the heir to the Vapran throne?”

“And I am a mixed-race peasant orphan? Yes, that’s the one.”

“You’re right, I _don’t_ like that reason,” she said. “And I’m also an orphan, technically.” That last one wasn’t quite fair, but she was hurt and tired so she said it anyway. 

He smiled softly, like he always did. “I just don’t think I’m the kind of person you’re supposed to be with.”

“I don’t care about that sort of thing,” she replied, somewhat offended that he thought she might. 

“I know you don’t,” he replied. “But other people will.”

“I don’t care what other people think either.”

“Well if other people don’t like it, you’re not the one they’re going to take it out on,” he said, gripping the back of a chair.

 _Ah_. She broke their gaze and looked down at her hands. “Sorry, I never even thought about it from your perspective. I’ve really been trying to get better about that, but I guess old habits are hard to break.”

“I don’t really know what it’s like to be in your shoes either.”

“Yes you do. You always understand what other people are feeling.” She backed away towards the door. “Anyway, I’ll keep my distance. I’ll come back and look at those books in the morning. When there are more people here. Not just the two of us.”

“Brea, you didn’t do anything wrong…”

“Stop,” she said, choking back the waver in her voice. “You don’t have to make me feel better whenever I’m upset. We can’t do that and also keep our distance. So I’m just going to go.” Before he could respond, she slipped out of the door and into the night. Without her cloak, she could, in fact, feel a chill on the breeze, but she welcomed it. Too exhausted to think, she leaned into the late hour and let the thin night air carry her home to the palace.

******

The First Sister had passed overhead and its light filtered down through the skylight as Kylan watched the door close behind Brea. He remembered all of the words that had tumbled out of his mouth over the last few minutes but he had no idea why he had said them. He didn’t know if anyone would care about the two of them being together, but he did know that he didn’t care about risking it. He knew he would always be welcome in Great Smerth, and he got along easily with Onica, and the Sifa always appreciated a good songteller among their ranks, so if things went wrong in Ha'rar, he had other places he could go.

The truth was that he _was_ feeling a little homesick, or at least unadjusted to Ha’rar, and feeling Brea’s arms around him _had_ made him feel better, and for some reason he had needed to stop feeling so comfortable with her, which made no sense, and so he had said what he had said.

And that music from the beach was still so loud that he could barely think straight. He grabbed his lute and his bag and walked out the door of the library. He needed to clear his mind, so he might as well go down to the shore and join whoever was playing that night. 

It was a long walk across the city to the mountain pass that led down to where Onica and the other Sifa were camped. He could have taken the public carriage that travelled up and down the main road, but the last time he’d taken it, he’d had to pretend he wasn’t listening while a Vapran childling commented to her mother on his clothes, his hair, his eyes, his skin. Maybe if he did get some new clothes he could pass for a Stonewood, which, given the stream of refugees to Ha’rar, would make him stand out a little less.

By the time he reached the mountain pass, the music had stopped, except for one song, low and mournful, that he could only half-hear through the sound of the waves. The tents dotting the beach were quiet and still in the darkness. The First Sister was now firmly behind the mountains, but the Second Sister had just barely risen over the sea. 

Onica’s tent was near the pass, but Kylan wasn’t ready to go home yet. Instead, he walked along the ridge above the beach, looking down at the tents and ships below, trying to find whoever was playing the last song. After walking past the last of the tents with no luck, he gave up. He sat down on a rock, strained his hearing for the music, and tried to play along.

For some reason, he had trouble finding the right key. He would play for a minute or so before needing to adjust the tuning, then another minute before needing to adjust it again. Whatever instrument the unseen players were using, it wasn’t a lute like his. It didn’t help that he couldn’t even hear all of the notes. It might have been the wind, or the gentle but insistent noise of the sea, but the same set of notes seemed to drop out over and over again as the song looped around chorus and verse. Still, trying to figure out the song was a welcome distraction after earlier in the evening when he had, you know, crushed the feelings of the person he was closest to in this part of the world.

He lost himself completely in his playing. As his hands worked the strings, strumming, tuning, retuning, his mind wandered to the trail of moonlight upon the Silver Sea, leading from the shore to the horizon. He had never seen anything like it before in his life, and sometimes he wondered how this place and the place he was from could be part of the same world. 

His mind wandered along the moonlit path, further and further towards the horizon, until he crossed over it. Beyond the horizon, he found himself no longer on the sea, but back in the castle, in the Crystal Chamber. The Crystal wasn’t Darkened, or even cracked, but whole and shining clear with a great light, brighter than anything he'd ever seen. And Brea was there with him. Not Brea. Another woman he had never met before, and she called him by his name, but it wasn’t his name. He tried to focus, and this time found himself back on the moonlit path, adrift at sea in a small boat, all alone. He held a lute in his hands, and he heard the same song, but he still couldn't find the right key and he still couldn't hear all of the notes.

Then the woman was there again, and she spoke, this time in Brea’s voice, he was sure of it, but not in his mind, he realized. He felt her hands on his arms, shaking him gently out of his reverie. He blinked and looked back at the sea. The Second Sister was much higher in the sky than it had been when he had first sat down. The real Brea stood before him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked her.

“Onica came to my room and said that you never came back to the tent, and you weren’t at the library. Have you been out here since I left?”

He tried to trace back through his memories of the past few hours, but everything was intercut with the music, the castle, the woman, the moonlight on the sea. 

“I think so?” he replied.

“It’s been four hours.”

He tried to remember what he’d been doing that whole time. “I just started playing and… I kept playing.”

“You’re shivering,” she said, picking up both cloaks, which had fallen off of his shoulders at some point, and wrapping them around him again. 

“Yeah, it’s cold here.” He bent back down over the lute and started strumming again. He almost had the right chord. 

“Maybe you should go back to the tent.”

“I just have to finish figuring out this tuning. I almost have this song. I think.”

“What song?”

“The song,” he said, waving his hand round in the air. 

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I’m worried you might get sick if you stay out here any longer.” He could tell from the tone of her voice that she might be concerned for his mental well-being. But he was fine. He needed to say something that would put her at ease. What had he been thinking about before he had gotten swept up in this song business? Ah, yes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still fiddling with the lute. “I should have kissed you in the library.” He loosened the first string again, and tightened the third.

“Well, I like the kissing part,” she responded after a pause. “But I don’t like the part where you seem to be losing your mind.”

“You don’t need to worry. I love you, Kel,” he said, pausing in his playing to place his hand on her cheek.

“Oh no, who’s Kel?” Brea replied, more to herself than to him, now clearly convinced that he was unwell. She placed her hand gently on top of his where it touched her cheek. _I’m fine_ , he thought. _What is she so worried about?_ Then the look on her face turned from concern to shock, and he watched as a small crimson drop fell from her cheek to the sand below.

“Oh Thra, you’re _bleeding_ ,” she said, pulling his hand off of her cheek and cradling it between them. 

He stared at his right hand, which was indeed a mess of smeared blood. “I guess my hands were cold,” he said, “and I just kept playing and the skin…” He held up his unbloodied left hand. “I was using a pick to strum,” he said, as if explaining the disparity between the two hands was the most pressing issue of the moment. The song grew louder, another flash of moonlight on the sea, the castle in the darkness, and, this time, a skull mask.

“I think I may not be okay,” he said.

“Let’s get you back to the tent, and wrap this up,” said Brea, still cradling his injured hand as she gently led him off of the rocks and down the beach. “Then Onica can help us with whatever sort of odd psychic phenomenon is going on here. The bad news is that you seem to be hearing music that isn’t really there. The good news is that I think that’s what we’ve been waiting for.”

******

“You're hearing a phantom song?” asked Onica as she sleepily unlocked a series of compartments in a trunk by the table. “And you think it might be the one from the vision? I guess that’s worth keeping me up half the night with worry.” She pulled out a roll of bandages and handed them to Brea, who was currently trying to get Kylan to keep his injured hand in a bowl of herbs and hot water. The water was a yellow-green and reminded Brea of the kitchens for some reason, before realizing it smelled like the liquid the servants used to clean the dishes.

“I don’t think it’s a phantom song,” said Kylan, wincing as the medicine seeped into his wounds. “I think I might be hearing and seeing someone else’s memories. If I could just…” He reached vaguely for his lute with his free hand. Onica calmly picked it up and moved it to the other side of the tent, out of his reach.

“What kind of memories?” she asked drowsily, sipping on her cup of tea.

“Moonlight on the sea. A boat. And the song, this strange, sad song, coming from just over the horizon…” he trailed off, and his eyes changed again, like they had kept changing on the beach. “I need my lute,” he mumbled to himself, trying to pull away from Brea and retrieve it from across the tent.

But Brea held on firmly to his injured hand. She pulled it out of the water and gently swabbed at the deepest cut, on the second finger, with a piece of bandage. Kylan’s scream of pain seemed to shake him back into reality. 

“What was that for?” he asked, his voice calm with the slight edge Brea had come to realize meant that he was upset.

“I was trying to figure out if I saw bone, but I think it’s just a piece of skin. And no more lute until we get these fingers bandaged.”

“Do you have to bandage them all individually?”

“Do you want your hand to be one giant bandage-mitt?” She watched his face and knew that he was calculating that it would be easier to play the lute, which he still intended to steal back at the first opportunity, if his hand was not one giant bandage-mitt. 

“Keep telling Onica about the memories,” Brea said. Onica sat across from them at the table with her tea in one hand and her head in the other, barely awake.

“All right,” he said. “I sailed all the way to the horizon, and then over it, following the song. But then the song was gone, and I was at the Castle of the Crystal. The Crystal was whole, unDarkened, and shining with an almost unbearable light. And there was a woman there.”

“Kel,” said Brea, who did not look up from bandaging his fingers. “When we were on the beach, you called me Kel.”

Onica, who had still been half-asleep up until that point, suddenly sat up straight, placing her cup of tea on the table. “Gyr,” she said in a whisper.

“Gyr, the songteller?” asked Kylan.

“We were looking at some books about him earlier,” said Brea. “But I thought there was no evidence that he was a real person.”

“He was a real person,” said Onica, somewhat offended. “He was a Sifa. And he had a Vapran wife named Kel.”

“Really? I never read about her in any of the books.”

“She’s in the Sifan books. Look.” Onica rummaged back through the trunk and pulled out a volume bound in green leather. _Tales from the Shores of the Silver Sea._ “If I had known you were looking for books about Gyr, I would have shown this to you.”

“We just started on the Gyr thread earlier this evening,” said Brea. “We kind of got interrupted.”

“So maybe reading about Gyr triggered the song?” said Onica.

“No,” said Kylan, his head resting on the table. “I think… I think I’ve been hearing the song ever since we got here. Most nights I went to sleep before the real musicians on the beach wrapped up, so I never heard it by itself. And I'm usually asleep before the Second Sister is in the same position over the sea as it was in the memory. That’s when the flashes started. But I’m still only getting bits and pieces of the song. This may sound strange, but I can’t hear all of the notes.”

“Look here,” said Onica, pointing to a passage. “It was said that Gyr once sailed over the sea and when he came back he wrote a song that was so sad that he gave up song-telling for over a trine. Until he met Kel, and they traveled the Skarith Land and he began to perform again for people they met on their travels. Those songs are recorded in this book, but of his songs from before his trip across the sea, none remain.”

“Is that the song we’re looking for?” asked Brea. “The sad one that makes people so depressed that they give up their life’s passion? If so, I don’t like it.”

“It’s not the actual song,” said Onica. “Just the memory of the song. Surely the effect won’t be so strong.”

“Besides,” said Kylan, his head still on the table, “this is what Mother Aughra sent me here to do. So I’m going to do it.” He pressed his hand to his head. “It won’t shut up inside my head. I have to do it.”

“We’ll take care of it,” said Onica. “We’ll go in to the memories, so you can hear the whole song. All the missing notes or whatever. Once you’ve got it, hopefully the hallucinations will go away.”

“How do we go into the memories?” Brea asked.

“Kylan, you’re already connected to the song via dreamspace somehow. I think I can help stabilize you, so that you can explore the memory of the song without getting… confused like you are now.”

“I’m coming too,” said Brea. “You shouldn’t have to go after this despair-song alone, and…”

“I can take care of it myself,” Kylan said, cutting her off. 

“Like you were taking care of yourself on the beach, when you almost sawed your own fingers off? I…” she trailed off. She was doing that thing again where she just charged ahead without regard for other people’s feelings. And he had made it clear earlier in the library, when his mind had still been in the right place, what his feelings were. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you can take care of it yourself. I’ll just stay here and keep guard.” She tied off the last bandage and let go of his hand. 

She was about to pick up the bowl of herbs to empty it outside, when his bandaged hand moved back to cover hers. “No, I don’t know why I said that,” he said. “I really do want you there. I’m sorry, I’ve been really off tonight.” _You are very confusing_ , Brea thought and was about to say, when Onica slammed her book shut.

“Okay, great,” she said, not quite rolling her eyes, but Brea could tell she was getting impatient. “Brea will go with you, and Tavra will keep guard.” Tavra appeared suddenly from the pocket of Onica’s robe. Spider Tavra. Tavra the spider. _When am I going to resolve that issue?_ Brea thought. 

Onica went over to an empty part of the tent used for soothsaying rituals. Three piles of three logs each with kindling beneath, stacked in three fire pits. She lit the fires and tossed in the powders, so the flames danced in purples and blues, their neat trails of smoke floating up through an opening above. The three of them sat in the sand in a triangle inverse to the fires: Onica with her back to the door, the Brea and Kylan sitting across from each other on a line parallel the sea. They raised their hands. Brea pressed one hand to Onica’s and the other to Kylan’s. 

And then she and Kylan were standing on the shore together, at the place where the moonlit path to the horizon met the small waves breaking on the beach. Onica stood behind them, her eyes closed, stabilizing the dreamspace pocket they found themselves in. Another flash, and Brea found herself and Kylan on a boat, far enough out to sea that they could no longer see the shore, and in the boat was a man.

 _Is that him?_ asked Brea.

_I think so._

Gyr. Most striking was the swath of red-brown coloring that splashed around his left eye. His hair was brown, not red like Onica’s and most of the other Sifa Brea had met, but as the wind picked up, he worked the sails and steered the ship as naturally as walking on land. He didn’t give any recognition that he could see them.

 _Do you hear the song?_ Kylan asked.

_No, do you?_

_Yeah. I hear it. It’s still faint, but…_

_What is it?_

_It’s…I don’t know, there’s something wrong about it. About the song._ Kylan gazed upon Gyr with a combination of fear and pity. _It filled him with a terrible sadness._

A flash of a skull, of the dark, of a splatter of blood, then they were back on the boat.

 _What was that?_ asked Brea.

_Oh. SkekMal. You know, the whole… thing with my parents. If I’m in a dreamfast and I’m tired or under stress, that memory just pops up. I can usually push it away like I just did._

_That’s terri…_

_Just ignore it_ , he said. 

Brea almost responded, but then stopped herself. _Don’t push him_ , she thought, and through their connection in dreamspace she felt a hint of his gratitude as he felt the hint of her restraint. 

The light of the Second Sister made a path across the sea stretching out to the horizon. The boat rocked gently as they sailed closer and closer to the horizon, but they never seemed to make any progress.

 _The moon is setting_ , said Brea. _How many days do you think he was sailing for?_

But Kylan wasn’t listening. He was watching Gyr, and Gyr was watching the horizon, and both of them had the same tense look on their face.

The skull mask. A woman being tossed against the wall, then picked up, then tossed again. Kylan shut his eyes but nothing happened. The same memory, intercutting the vision of Gyr and the boat. Brea focused on the skull mask of the Hunter the next time it flashed into their joint memories. The same mask, as it appeared in the Circle of the Suns. The same mask, leaping towards her, grabbing her off the ground… _Oh Thra, no, now we’re just getting stuck inside my terror instead._

But the Circle of the Suns was an anchor and she walked back the memory. Sitting before urGoh and skekGra as they performed the tale of the urSkeks, a tale of hope, of broken things being made whole again. The dark feelings faded, and soon they were back on the boat with Gyr.

 _It might happen again_ , said Kylan. _I can’t control it. Everything is just so overwhelming right now._

 _It’s all right_ , said Brea. _We can stop whenever we want._

_No, I’ll keep going._

Gyr sailed for days and nights; the suns rose, one by one, and set, one by one, and then they rose again. He passed strange things on the sea, and had strange dreams. But he kept sailing, below three suns and below two moons. Kylan paled more the further they sailed. Brea was beginning to fear that he was getting lost again, when she heard him in her mind.

_The song is louder than ever. The notes are strange and it’s making me feel physically sick. But in his memory of it, as he’s remembering it, it’s filling him with sadness and shame, and that’s even worse._

_Can you keep going?_

_I…_

When the flash of skekMal came again this time, Brea was expecting it. She tried to give Kylan strength to push it back, but it grew stronger. _Maybe we just need to go through it_ , she said, tentatively. _Just let the whole memory play its course. I know it can’t be easy…_

 _No. I can’t show it to anyone. I can’t show it to you. Not yet._ She felt something at the _not yet_. A glimpse of a different memory, of the two of them at the library, standing together in the window. And then a flash back to the Hunter.

 _That’s all right_ , she said. _I have another plan._

She faced the memory of the skull mask head on, and let it take her back to the Circle of the Suns. But this time, she chose the exact moment when, against all expectations, an arrow flew through the air and pierced the Hunter in the chest. She turned to see the Archer, with his kind eyes and kind voice, firing arrow after arrow at his other half, feeling the same pain as the same wounds appeared on his own flesh.

 _He was kind_ , said Brea. _And brave. And in the end he made the choice to give up himself so that others could live_. 

She felt Kylan’s mind relax. The image of the Archer disappeared and they were back on the boat. Triple suns hovered above the horizon, and another light, so bright that she thought it was a moon. But it wasn’t.

“An urSkek,” she gasped. 

Kylan looked up, then turned his face away and closed his eyes. _I’ve got the song_ , she heard him say. _Let’s go._

******

Kylan came out of dreamspace and was hit by a wave of dizziness. He began to fall, but Brea grabbed onto him, and placed his head on her knees. He let her. Eyes still closed, breath short, he spoke.

“I need something,” he said. “I need to stitch the memory of the song before I forget it.”

“I have paper,” said Onica, crawling towards the trunk to retrieve it. Tavra scuttled onto her shoulder.

“Right now I’m so on edge I think I’d probably set the paper on fire. How about a rock? Two rocks, I should do two in case we lose one.”

Onica made it to her feet, slightly wobbling, and headed toward the tent flap. “Are you okay?” he heard Brea ask her.

“Yes, just a little spent,” Onica replied, exiting the tent. She returned shortly with two rocks, each the size of a fist, and placed them on top of the trunk by the table. 

Kylan managed to pick his head up off of Brea’s lap and make his way over to the rocks. He closed his eyes and concentrated, stitching the memory first into one rock, and then the other, sealing each one in with a dream-etching. Exhausted, he dropped his head onto the trunk. He pushed one of the rocks over to Onica. “You should keep this one,” he said.

“Do you feel better?” Onica asked, as she began to put out the three fires from the ritual.

“My head is clear. I still feel a little sick, though.” 

“You said the song made you feel ill,” said Brea, taking a chair at the table.

“It was the notes, I think. When I said before I couldn’t hear some of the notes, I think it was because they’re not notes that Gelfling ears can usually hear. Some are too low, some are too high. Gyr could hear them somehow, I don’t know why. Maybe he had exceptional hearing. But when I heard them in the memory, they just made me feel sick to my stomach.”

“But now you can hear them whenever you access the dream-stitch,” said Onica as she put out the last fire. The tent dimmed, now lit only by a few small candles on the table.

“I think so. I hope so. I’ll try to write the song down on a staff tomorrow and then we can work from there.”

“Did you see it?” Brea asked, staring into the flame of a half-melted candle that cast small shadows on the table.

“See what?” asked Onica.

“The source of the song.”

“Not well,” Kylan said. “It was like a light in the sky but not a sun or a moon.”

Brea kept her focus on the flickering candle flame. “It was an urSkek,” she said.

Kylan recalled the memory she had shared with him earlier. “Like urGoh and skekGra showed you?”

"Yes, but a real one,” she said, looking down at him. “That must be why some of the notes were strange. The urSkeks’ bodies are different from ours, and therefore so are the sounds that they can perceive and produce.”

“That’s fascinating,” he said.

“But what does it mean for us?” asked Onica. "For the visions we had in Stone-in-the-Wood?"

“I have no idea,” said Brea, turning her gaze back to the candle. For once, she seemed subdued by those words, rather than excited by the challenge in them. _She doesn’t like the idea of things she can’t hear_ , Kylan thought. _Because maybe that means there are things she can’t know._

“Well,” said Onica, “we’re not going to solve this mystery tonight, but we made a lot of progress. I’m going to go wash this bowl and then go to sleep.” She paused when she reached the tent flap. “Congratulations, friends,” she said. “We did it.”

Kylan remained in his place half-lying on the trunk. The Sifan artisan who had made it must have traded for the wood in the south; the variety grew only in the southernmost reaches of the Forest and the sparse thickets on the Plains. The scent of it brought him back to his childhood, asleep in his bed in Maudra Mera's house on a rainy morning, and, dimly, a memory of an earlier bed in an earlier home. The memories were, for once, peaceful. _I am so tired_ , he thought. _But Brea’s not okay._

“Seeing the urSkek must have been unsettling,” he began. 

“Oh no you don’t,” she said, shifting her gaze back to him from the candle flame. “Don’t make this about me. I’ll be fine. You’re the one who’s been through such an emotional wringer that you’ve collapsed on the furniture.”

“I actually feel a lot better now that we found the song. I'm just tired." He paused, running his bandaged fingers over the dark wood of the trunk. "I’m sorry about earlier tonight in the library."

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she responded in the low light. “Everything you said makes sense. It’s just me once again trying to ignore the fact that I can’t get what I want all the time. I have this position in life, for better or for worse, and…”

“No, I don’t care about your position in life. I mean, maybe it’s something we should keep in mind, but that’s not why I pushed you away.” He paused and took a breath, his exhausted brain trying to figure out how to phrase what came next. “My general strategy for as long as I can remember has been to keep myself on the outside. Not really getting close to anyone, but trying to make myself useful to other people so that they would want to keep me around and I wouldn’t be alone. But I was starting to feel like that wasn’t going to work with you. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks, but I… everything was just going very fast.” 

“Well, I certainly don’t hate that reason,” she said after a pause, her hands clasped in front of her on the table. “It’s a perfectly good reason. If that’s how you felt, you could have just told me.” 

“Actually,” he said, “it _was_ how I felt, but then we spent the night together navigating past my darkest memories on a quest to find the long-lost despair-song of an urSkek, and now letting myself get close to you doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal anymore. I'm really glad you were there with me.” 

“It really was a long, weird night,” she said. 

In the dim light, her face looked tired, much quieter than it normally did, but she smiled softly as she spoke. He lifted his head up from the trunk and knelt by the chair where she sat. He offered her his undamaged hand. She took it, and her smile deepened as he pulled her close.

******

The Second Sister was now over the mountains and the sea was lit only by the stars. Onica finished rinsing the medicine bowl and stood in the low waves, staring at the sea. “You want to talk,” she said to Tavra. “Go ahead.”

She stood calmly as the Threader wrapped two long arms around her face and another around the back of her neck, until the connection between their minds was made. Although to an outside observer Onica stood alone before the sea, within her mind, the image of Tavra as she used to be appeared beside her and they stood together, hand in hand, as the small waves rolled over their bare feet. 

“You saw something,” Tavra said. “You had a vision when you held open the dreamspace pocket in Stone-in-the-Wood. You must have had another one now.”

“I did,” Onica replied, her eyes still focused on the starry sea, trying to fixate on each tiny point of light until she was lost in their boundlessness. 

“Was it a good one?”

Onica sighed, wishing that she could get truly lost in the stars, and bring Tavra with her. The two of them alone, sailing through the skies, entire other worlds passing beneath them. But that was not possible, and Tavra deserved the truth.

“Everything was brown and withered and dust,” Onica began. “The blight covered the whole world. The Skeksis remained in the Castle of the Crystal, but they too were withered and of dust and blight. They kept Mother Aughra in a cage, and she forgot herself. They drained Podlings until they became white-eyed slaves, and drank their essence. The Skeksis themselves were dying, and once they died, there would be no life left.”

“What about the Gelfling?” 

“Oh Tavra,” she said. “There were no Gelfling.”

The mind-Tavra beside her got that look on her face when she was trying to fix something that couldn’t be fixed. “You told me before that visions of the future don’t always come to pass.”

“That’s true. But it was a strong one. We had a success here tonight, but I fear something has gone wrong with the others. At the castle or in Grot. Or both.” 

They walked in silence back to the tent, hand in hand in their minds, although an onlooker would see only a woman attached to a Threader. “But you’re right,” Onica said with a soft smile as they approached the tent. “Visions of the future don’t always come to pass. We should hold on to hope.” 

With that, Onica dropped the bowl so that it landed on a rock with a noticeable thonk. “Whoops,” she said loudly, “I dropped the bowl.”

“What was that about?” asked Tavra as Onica bent down to pick it up.

“When you live in a bunch of tents instead of a palace with lockable doors, you learn to give people a warning before you enter so they know to stop making out.”

Tavra put the thoughts together, and Onica laughed out loud, a real laugh, as she began to sputter. “They’re not… _making out_.” 

“If they’re not making out now, then I refuse to spend any more time with them until they do,” said Onica in response. “I’ve lost my patience with them dancing around their feelings for each other.” 

“Dancing around…. does Brea even like boys?”

Before Onica could answer, Brea and Kylan exited the tent. “We’re just going to go to bed now,” Brea said hastily. “Thank you for the bandages and the dreamspace stuff, and everything.” The two of them started up the hill towards the mountain pass that led to Ha’rar and the Citadel. 

“She likes that one,” Onica replied with a grin. “You have not been paying attention, have you?”

Onica felt Tavra’s twinge of grief through their joint minds. “I haven’t really spent any time with her. She doesn’t… she’s confused about what I am now. I want to fix it, but to be honest, I’m still a little confused about what I am now too. Why is it so much easier with you?”

“Because I’m used to dwelling in odd spiritual gray areas. You and your sisters are very much not. Seladon probably would have more of a knack for it than Brea. Have you tried talking to her?”

“I’ll try. Maybe tomorrow.”

Onica lay down on her cot and pulled up the blanket. She felt the Threader pulling away from her mind, severing the connection. “Wait,” she said.

"We need to be careful about staying attached for too long.”

“I know. I just need to see some happy memories before I can fall asleep. Somewhere green.”

Together they relived pieces of their life from before, back when everything was normal, before the whole world fell apart. A walk through the evergreen forest around Ha’rar. Camping on one of the small islands off the northwestern coast. Lying together on the same exact cot in the same exact tent, only a few months ago. An hour or so before the dawn of the Great Sun, they let their minds drift apart, and finally slept.

But their rest was brief. As the Great Sun rose just high enough above the sea for the day to really be called morning, the Threader woke up, shrieking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to posting on Mondays from here on out!


	8. (2.3) Blight & Waste

Part 2.3: Blight & Waste  
_An alliance proposed. A kind of existential dread. A better way. Much stabbing. Old friends. The merits of mathematics. A necessary part of the scientific process._  
POVs: Deet, Amri, Vow-Guy, Naia, Deet, Kylan, skekTek

******

The Rose Sun was low in the sky, flanked by the Dying Sun, and together they cast steep rays of red and red-violet through the windows of the throne room. Several days had passed since Deet and the spirit that possessed her had decided to remain in the Castle of the Crystal. When Deet’s body was awake, they roamed the halls, occasionally frightening the Skeksis, sometimes interrogating them about how they had managed to spread the Darkening so effectively, and, most often, going to the Crystal Chamber and connecting to the Crystal itself, which was, like Deet, possessed by the spirit of the Darkening.

Through the Crystal, Deet and the Darkened spirit could enter the minds of Darkened creatures across Thra and experience their fear and their wrath. Earlier that day, they had shared the mind of a Darkened nebrie as it uprooted an entire village of Podlings. Together, they watched the small faces distort in fear, heard their screams and the crashes of collapsing homes, smelled the odor of soil mixed with blood.

Deet was sickened by these visions, and as she sickened, the power of the Darkening over her body grew more complete. She retreated into her memories of home, safe deep in the ground, the feel of the cool rock beneath her fingers, and the blue glow of the moss reflecting on the smiling faces of her family and friends. Now, late in the day, her body rested upon the throne, Lore standing guard. Deet longed for sleep, for the brief dark hours where she was unconscious and at peace.

“Honored guest,” said a deep voice, disturbing Deet’s body and its occupants from their almost-slumber.

“It is you who are the guest,” the Darkened One replied to the Emperor.

“Apologies. Honored…Presence. I humbly kneel before you to request an audience.”

“We allow it. You have until the Rose Sun sets.”

“Honored One, you have spent countless blessed days in our castle, days that have filled these halls with a new energy and vigor. And yet we have not had the opportunity to discuss the formalities of our arrangement. I believe that you and the Skeksis have common goals, and it would merit both of us to discuss cooperation between our parties.”

The voice of the Emperor filtered through the Darkened One into Deet’s mind as if through water. A few words made it through, but not enough to form coherent meaning. She stayed safely ensconced in her cavern of memories. 

“You, Honored One,” the Emperor continued, “thrive on the Darkening. Are of the Darkening. To survive, you need the Darkening to spread. Yes, it spreads with the… untimely deaths of the creatures of Thra. But there is one kind of creature that could, potentially, put an end to the death and the Darkening and therefore to you. It is in both of our best interests if this threat is neutralized.”

“Gelfling,” said the Darkened One. “You would drain them until they are no more. But their essence is vital to the functioning of the Crystal, must cycle through the Crystal from death to rebirth. If you steal the essence of the very last Gelfling, what then will power the Crystal? What will power the Darkening?”

 _That’s odd_. The thought came to Deet dimly like a ray of sunlight at the bottom of the sea. _Why would the Darkening need the Crystal’s power in order to survive, when the Darkening is power itself?_ A handful of thoughts and ideas floated around in her mind, drawing near each other but never quite connecting into a realization. If she were to chase them, she would have to leave the security of her memories, the safety of the cool, dark caves.

“Honored One,” said the Emperor, “we can be…moderate in our actions. We can capture the Gelfling, keep them under control some place where we can take from them whenever we have need of them, and let just enough live so that they do not die out. Both will survive and thrive: the power of Crystal, and the Darkening which gives you form. And, humbly, so too shall the Skeksis.” 

“The Gelfling resist you. They are many and you are few. How will you achieve this?”

“The Scientist’s creature…”

“Yes, the abomination,” snarled the Darkened One. “We are aware of it.”

“The Scientist’s creature, the Garthim, once we have tested it, trained it, bred it, we will have an army at our service that we can use to subdue the Gelfling.”

“Then what do you need from us?”

“Through the Crystal, you have access to the minds of Darkened beasts in all corners of Thra to which the Darkening has spread, and more corners are Darkened each day. Use this sight to help us to find the Gelfling where they hide, help us to overhear their plans, and together, we will be unstoppable in our endeavors.” 

Against its own will, Deet’s mind left the safety of the blue-lit caves of her childhood and flashed back to the vision of the small broken bodies of the Podlings killed by the Darkened nebrie earlier that day. Deet, the nebrie, the Crystal of Truth, all three possessed by the same spirit of the Darkening. 

_Or are we?_ And there, outside of the safety of her memories of home, the loose threads floating around her mind found each other, and Deet’s realization came to her at last.

 _The Darkened Crystal_ is _the Crystal_ , she thought. _There is no separate entity called the Darkening possessing it. The Darkened Crystal is the Crystal of Truth with the Truth drained out of it. That is why the Darkening has no power if the Crystal has no power._

 _And_ , Deet realized in horror, _it’s the same with me. I’m not possessed by some spirit of the Darkening. It’s me. All of it is me, being drained of the good that is within me, and what remains is this Darkened creature_. 

“Honored One,” said the Emperor. “What say you? Will you join forces with the Skeksis, for the greater glory of all involved?”

Deet felt the voice of the Darkened One, the Darkened _her_ gurgling up from deep within, to smirk an acceptance of the Emperor’s dark alliance, a voice so strong that it felt like it would explode from her throat like a roar of thunder, far too strong for Deet to hold back. It would be so easy for her to retreat back into the glow-light of her memories instead, where she would be embraced safely by the caves in which she had lived her whole life, until she simply faded away, blissfully unaware of the Darkened One and all that she did. 

_But it’s me_ , Deet thought again. _It’s always been me. And I do not want to betray the Gelfling_. She felt herself swimming up through the watery distance between her old self and whatever now controlled her body, through blue-white light into dark purple, and at last she surfaced into the late afternoon light.

“No,” said Deet, in her own voice. “Just go away. Find your other halves. Stay with them in solitude until we can heal you and send you home.”

The Emperor snapped up his head at her words. She knew he saw now not a powerful avatar of the Darkening, but one very small Gelfling girl. His entire demeanor transformed from obsequiousness to malevolence. She knew that she was in incredible danger, but she couldn’t turn back now.

“Please,” she said. “It’s the only way that we can all find peace. Don’t you want to be at peace?”

He snarled, and reached out a hand to choke her as he had on her first night in the castle. _Now is the time for me to decide, once and for all_ , she thought. _I can give myself over to the Darkened part of me and stay alive. Or if I let him finish me off, then it will all be over, and I will die, but as my old self, my better self._

She wanted very much to choose her better self. But as easy as it was to want to be better, it was very hard to die. She felt the crackle of violet plasma in her left hand, raised it, and for an uncertain moment, let it hover in front of her. 

Deet did not, in the end, get to make the choice. Before the Emperor could get his hand around her neck, Lore snapped her up, lifting her out of his reach.

“Cursed abomination of stone.” The Emperor swung at Lore, but Lore was too fast for him. With Deet in his arms, he clambered out of the throne room and down the winding hallways of the castle.

Deet, her outstretched left hand crackling with Darkened energy even as she fled the throne room in Lore’s arms, breathed quickly and shallowly as her mind wrestled with itself, as she felt the pull of unseen hands on her legs, threatening to pull her back down into the watery gulf that separated her old mind from her Darkened one. She did not manage to tamper down her Darker self until they had made it through the castle gates and half a league down the road.

Out of danger from the Emperor and the other Skeksis, at least momentarily, and lacking any other order, Lore paused in the middle of the road. “Lore,” Deet managed to get out at last. “Let’s leave. Just go. Anywhere. Anywhere you want to go.”

And so, he did.

******

_Is it possible to be nothing, but also know that you are nothing?_

Even in the moment, Amri knew it was strange how calm he was being as he felt his body and soul draining away. The strange, sudden whirring of the crystal vein stalagmite with which his mind was currently fused had given away to silence, as if the whirring itself had filled up his ears to the point that they had no room left to process any further sound. The dancing strings of light that he had envisioned within the vein of crystal had shifted from light blue to the darkest violet, and he could almost see pieces of himself, tiny strings like the ones in the crystal vein, melting off of his fingers and joining their Darkened counterparts. 

Amri felt himself floating into nothingness. A terrible dread passed through him, a dread that should have made a Gelfling scream in terror. But nothingness can’t scream, and he was nothing, so he didn’t.

And then he collided firmly with existence once again, as he was knocked away from the crystal vein and onto the hard stone floor, a thin layer of mud scraping up against his cheek. At first he could see nothing but the small strings of light, everywhere, and hear nothing but silence. Then, thinly, a high-pitched screeching, joined by a voice, shouting very, very loudly.

“Amri! You need to come back to us _now_.”

The strings of light faded away as his eyes focused on Naia’s face, inches from his, an expression of horror upon it. The screeching had stopped, and the cavern was silent except for the flow of water from the stream.

“I’m okay,” he whispered, shuddering once or twice. _Kind of_. He felt strangely cold, beyond the cold of the cavern floor. Without thinking, he reached up and placed his shaky arms around Naia’s neck and pulled her down to him so he could feel something warm and living. She framed his head with her arms and held him close. 

“I’m going to guess that I did not look cool that time,” he said.

“No,” she said, crying and yet also angry-sounding. That was confusing. “I watched it happen to my brother, and then I had to watch it happen again to you.”

“Your brother?”

“When they tried to drain him in the castle. I saw it in his memories.”

“Is that what that was?”

“Amri, look at the crystal.” 

He lifted his head, just enough to see it over Naia. The crystal stalagmite, all of the crystal in the cavern, the entire vein, had turned deep violet. He put his head back down on the ground.

“I don’t know what it was like in the castle,” he said, “but here, I was… peaceful. No, that’s not right, there was this terrible existential dread. But I didn’t resist it. I was calm. I couldn’t be any other way. It convinced me that I was already gone.”

Any further speculation was cut off when the terrible screeching started again, and Amri turned to see Karlak writhing on the floor. 

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked, extracting himself from beneath Naia and crawling over to the Threader. Amri offered his arm to Karlak, who, once the moment of violent shrieking had passed, climbed up to his shoulder, his neck, his face, and connected.

Amri’s mind raced through the Arathim network, and he soon found himself back in the Tomb of Relics, looking through the eyes of one of the Spitters, from a disorienting viewpoint on the ceiling. The room was such a flurry of motion that it took him a moment to focus on the scene. 

The first thing he saw was one of the Spitters lying motionless at the entrance to the tunnel that used to lead to Domrak village. He sensed something was off about it, before realizing he was, in fact, looking at only half a Spitter. The other half was lying across the room, the two halves connected by a trail of blood. 

Another Spitter stumbled into Amri’s view, desperately fleeing something, hampered by three blunt stumps where three of its legs had been. Amri tried to see what the Spitter was running from, but no matter where he looked he couldn’t seem to put an eye on it. Then his body was wracked with pain and he felt Karlak break the connection.

“We have to get back to the Tomb,” he said to Naia as Karlak curled up in pain in his hands. “Something is happening to the Arathim.”

They climbed back up to the entrance of the cavern and Naia swam them back through to the other side. Amri cradled his Threader, who intermittently convulsed with anguish as the attack on its fellow Arathim continued. The echoes of thuds and crashes reverberated down the tunnels as they approached the Tomb of Relics. They turned a corner, and there stood the Tomb, framed by the walls of the tunnel. At first, all seemed still. Then a Spitter went flying through the air and crashed with a thud against the far wall. 

The room was a horror of blood and dead spiders. In addition to the Spitter that had been cleaved in two, the one who had lost three of its legs seemed to have succumbed to its wounds and was lying motionless on the floor. A third sat in the corner, calm and quiet, still breathing but bleeding profusely from a large slice to its thorax. Over it loomed what at first seemed to be another Arathim, but, as Amri looked closer, was another thing entirely. Its body was black like a Spitter’s, but hard and shiny, like a shell, or armor. Two of its arms ended in pinchers that explained the injuries of the Arathim, and its eyes glowed a dead, dull violet light. 

“What is that thing?” he whispered to Naia, hoping it was something that surface-Gelfling were familiar with and knew how to handle. 

“I don’t know, but it’s killing them,” she said, with the decisive tone she used when she was about to barrel ahead, regardless of the consequences. _Please do not barrel ahead regard…_

But Naia had already picked up a rock and hurled it at the terrible creature. The rock bounced off of its armor-like skin with a loud but ineffectual thunk. 

“Hey,” she yelled. “Leave them alone!”

Amri had the presence of mind to snatch up their pack before the creature could react. He grabbed at Naia’s shirt as the creature turned slowly and faced them with dead violet eyes. “All right, let’s go then,” he said, leading them down the tunnel that lead back to the surface.

The creature, despite its bulk, was swift, and began to close in on them well before they reached the opening leading from the caves back to the surface. They were, however, almost at the pond with the underwater tunnel leading to the outside, the one where Naia had first discovered the ley line over a week ago.

“We’re going to have to swim through,” said Naia. 

“Will I make it?”

“I might need the full minute, but we’ll make it.” Karlak scuttled up the wall, found a crack, and squeezed through. Amri strapped the pack to his back.

They plunged into the water, side by side. He grabbed Naia’s ankles and they went under, fortunately still glowing from their earlier trip through the tunnels. He felt the water rush past him as she beat her wings again and again, down further than they had gone before. He decided to close his eyes and hope for the best. 

They surfaced on the other side of the wall, Naia pushing him over to the edge of the pool as he gasped for breath. Karlak scuttled over and climbed on top of his head. Amri wasn’t sure, but he suspected the Threader might have been worried about him. He was touched.

But before they could climb out of the pool, a muffled thud reverberated through the rocks around them and rippled through the water. It was followed by another, and then another. He looked at Naia.

“It’s breaking through the rock,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She slid out of the water and then helped him up. They ran over to the landstrider, which stood on edge, ready to bolt. Dripping, they climbed up the ladder, into the saddle and held on tight as Naia urged it outside. Amri managed to find the hood of his cloak and pull it over his eyes to block out the morning light of the Great Sun. 

They made it just past the opening that led to the caves when the creature punched through the rock of the mountainside and out into the daylight.

******

In the thin, gray-blue light of the long dawn, a lone figure in a dark cloak ambled its way across the wide rocky emptiness of the eastern wasteland, a blur of gray on gray. The stars had largely faded from the endless sky, although one or two still dotted the western horizon. But the walker was wise enough to know that, although invisible, the stars still remained, burning in the vastness of space.

It would be a long walk to the Crystal Sea, his destination. Although he was weakening, he still felt a large enough stock of days left within him that he needn’t rush. Which was good. The blight that had its seed in many trine past was coming to fruition at an alarming rate, and since much of his body was of Thra, it took its toll on him as well, withering away his arms, his legs, his face, but not his heart. His pace was slow, but his resolve did not waver. He limped onward.

All three suns rose, yellow, red, red-violet points in the sky, warming his back while illuminating the mountains of Grot before him. The mountains were stony and hard, yes, but with thick patches of green forest sloping gently down from the timber line. Thousands of memories flooded back to him, of life amongst the trees and speechless beasts and wise creatures of the surface world. He had been gone for too long. 

His meditation on the scenery, memory, and the fleetingness of life was disrupted by a gray speck on the horizon. He ignored it, and kept up his loping pace. It wasn’t until he sat down on a dusty boulder to rest his legs and bask in the early morning sun that he bothered to check for it again, and noted that it was not one speck but two, a gray hulk with a pale green blur floating above it. He sat on the boulder, legs dangling, and decided to let them come to him. 

It was mid-morning, when, as he had suspected, an old friend and a Gelfling girl arrived at his boulder. 

“Hello, little Gelfling,” he said, as she fluttered down and settled on Lore’s back. “I see you found my friend. Does that mean you found the puzzle in our little book?”

“I…no, that was my friend Brea, actually,” she responded cautiously, pulling back the heavy hood that had shadowed her face. “She kind of lent him to me. When I ended up like this.” 

He looked closely at the girl. At first he saw only a young Gelfling of twenty trine or maybe less, one who perhaps had not spent much time under the Suns. But then behind her eyes, violet light flashed, and in her veins, her blood flowed, Darkened. He reached out his hand to her, but she shrank away.

“No need to keep your distance,” he said. “There’s not much more you can do to me.” He removed his own hood to reveal a face, shriveled and melted.

“You… you look like Mother Aughra,” she said. “Do you know her?”

 _Do I know her_. He laughed. “Yes, I know her. In fact, I called her Mother before any Gelfling did.”

“Oh, she really is your mother?” the girl asked. “I didn’t know Mother Aughra had any actual children. I thought it was just a title.”

“I see she doesn’t talk about me. Well, it makes sense. We parted ways a long time ago. My name is Raunip.”

“It’s nice to meet you. My name is Deet.” She paused, blinking around at the endless expanse of tan rock that surrounded them. “Would you mind if I asked where you came from? When I was flying I saw nothing ahead but wasteland.”

“I’ve been underground for a long, long time. I just climbed back to the surface a few days ago.”

“Oh. I grew up underground, in Domrak, in the mountains of Grot. But my clan had to abandon it.” _Ah, that explains the pallor, and the eyes, and the ears. How long have these clans kept themselves apart from each other?_

“I’ve been to Domrak, a long time ago, when the Arathim dwelled there,” he said. “But recently I’ve been much deeper within the body of Thra.”

“Like where the breath of Thra comes from?”

“Yes, like that. There’s a whole fire inside our world.”

“And are there creatures there? Are they well? Are they free of the blight?” Her voice was so eager with hope that Raunip was afraid to let her down with his response.

“Yes, there are creatures, and for now they are well," he said. “But I cannot give you false hope. The blight threatens all of Thra. It will come for the surface-dwellers first, but eventually all life will succumb to it, if it’s not stopped.”

“The Darkening has already spread so far,” she said. “I tried to stop it, but as you can see, it got the best of me in the end.” She spread her arms in front of her and her sleeves rolled down to her elbows, revealing the purple veins that criss-crossed her arms, like the purple veins of Darkened crystal that now criss-crossed Thra. 

Raunip’s heart ached at her suffering. The lives of the Gelfling were already so brief. To see one ruined at such a young age filled him with sorrow. He had known so many Gelfling, their lifespans like weeks to him, but he remembered them all, and still mourned each one.

“I just fled the castle,” she continued. “I needed to leave, so I told Lore to just go anywhere he wanted, and he brought me here to the wasteland.”

Raunip placed an affectionate hand on one of Lore’s arm-boulders. “He must have sensed my return and come looking for me,” he said. “I helped make him, you know.”

“With the Heretic and the Wanderer?” Her ears perked forward in interest, that cute way Gelfling ears did.

“Yes, you’ve met them of course, if you and your friends found Lore. They are old friends of mine." _Old friends_. He had been reconciled with GraGoh for so long that he barely remembered the time when they had been, to put it lightly, less than friends. "But what were you doing in the castle?” he asked.

“We tried to heal the Crystal, but it didn't work.”

 _So they've found the shard already too. Very enterprising._ “Did you ask the Crystal how it is to be healed?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Ah. You and your friends have come very far indeed. But there are still threads to pull together.”

“Do you know the answer?”

“I don’t know how to heal the Crystal. It must be asked. And only the Gelfling can do that.” 

She pulled on her sleeves so that they covered up her arms once more. “And if we can heal the Crystal, do you think I will be healed as well?”

 _There has to be something I can do for her_. “What exactly happened to you?” he asked.

“I took on the power of the Sanctuary Tree, so that I could heal Darkened beasts in its stead, but something happened and now the spirit of the Darkening has taken me over. Every living thing I touch withers away."

 _A Great Tree_ , he thought. _I know the Great Trees and their powers well_. He opened his mouth to respond, but she cut him off before he could begin. 

“No,” she said. “I need to face the truth. I call it the spirit of the Darkening, but really, it’s me. It’s me with all the kind parts missing. It’s what you get when you drain all the good away. And it’s who I really am.”

Raunip stared at her, at the dark veins that pulsed on her face, and at her downturned eyes filling with tears. “That’s nonsense,” he said. “If it’s you with all of the kind parts missing, then it’s not really you, is it?” 

She paused for a moment, then sniffled once. “I’ve been trying so hard to fight it,” she said. “But I can’t. I can’t conquer it. I lost control and I _murdered_ a Skeksis, which means an urRu must have died as well. And then I tried to do it again. And again. I had a choice and I gave in to the Darkening to save myself. Over and over.” The morning light of the three suns shone from the east, and a blend of their warm colors was reflected in the tears that she struggled but failed to hold back.

“Well,” said Raunip after a moment, “if you’ve made it all the way here, you must have fought it well enough.”

“But I failed,” she said.

“There are some things that, in the end, we cannot do,” Raunip said. “But if we don’t stop looking, we may find another way. Or, at least, the best way possible.”

“I _knew_ ,” began Deet. “I knew I could choose to die rather than to surrender to the Darkening. That’s the other way. The best way possible.”

 _This is where I come in_. Now that the right moment had come, he didn’t even hesitate. 

“Oh no, my dear Gelfling. There is a much better way.” He reached out his hand. “I know the ways of the Great Trees, and I can take this burden from you. Dreamfast with me,” he said.

“You can dreamfast? Like Mother Aughra.”

“Yes.”

“But you’ll be hurt by the Darkening.”

“I am beyond saving at this point. But with Lore to bear me I will be able to complete my quest faster than I thought. And we can drop you off at Wellspring on our way. I have always loved the Gelfling. If I can do this one good for you, I will reach my end of days all the happier.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“You can," he said. “You trust my mother, don't you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then trust me.” 

She looked at his outstretched hand, then slowly touched her hand to it, and they entered the dreamfast. It only took an instant for him to pull the blight right out of her and bury it deep within himself.

******

The landstrider reared as the strange creature from the Tomb came bursting out of the rock and scurried towards them. Naia placed a gentle hand on the landstrider’s back, concentrating like she did in the healing trance. Either the trance or the comforting hand worked, as the landstrider calmed and allowed itself to be lead into a gallop.

They roared across the dusty, rocky ground, the creature close behind. After being underground for so long, Naia had completely lost track of the time of day, and it took her a few minutes of switching back and forth between checking the sky and guiding the landstrider to figure out that they were heading east.

“Amri,” she yelled back to him.

“It’s still following us.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I hate it.”

“Yes, I know. What’s to the east?”

“Oh, the waste.”

“Anything else?”

“More waste.”

“Well, that’s where we’re going.”

The ground beneath them was an endless plane of tan rock and dust, so flat and monotonous that she didn’t notice that the that it ended in a steep cliff until they were almost upon it. She veered to the left, but the creature followed. Naia searched desperately for anything they could hide behind, a rock formation, some hills, anything. All she found was another steep drop coming up straight ahead.

The landstrider noticed the cliff as well. It reared, turned, and, despite Naia’s prods to turn it away, began to rush the creature head on. 

Naia felt Amri’s arms tighten around her waist. “It’ll be okay,” she said. _Somehow_. They were still close to the edge of the cliff. Maybe there was a landing down there somewhere and she could glide them to safety. 

The landstrider completed its charge, raised its front legs, and slashed at the creature. One of the landstrider’s legs caught the creature between a gap in its armor-like skin. The creature reeled back, as if in shock that such a thing could happen. The landstrider wasted no time and rounded back for another charge. 

Naia pushed herself up in the saddle and swung around the side so that she was sitting behind Amri.

“I’m going to jump off,” she said.

“What do you mean…?”

Before he could finish, she wrapped her arms around his waist and leapt off of the landstrider, spreading her wings to soften their descent. She backed up to the edge of the cliff and looked down. No landings. There was no way they’d make it down without serious injury. Perhaps there was a way down the ridge around to the east, if she could get the chance to inspect it.

The landstrider and the creature clashed again. The landstrider got in another hit, and a black ooze began to flow from the creature’s joints. But before the landstrider could get away, the creature snapped at it with one of its claws, and a red gash appeared on the landstrider's belly. Despite the wound, the landstrider rounded again and prepared to charge once more. 

This time, it managed to flip the creature over. Enraged, the landstrider stomped on the creature’s underbelly, its forelegs a flurry of motion. Naia ran to its side, her dagger drawn. She dodged the flailing claws of the overturned creature, found a soft spot, and stabbed. 

She kept stabbing until it stopped moving. Her hair and clothes still damp from the swim out of the cave, Naia knelt back and caught her breath as the mid-morning sun baked the black gore from the creature and the tan dust of the wasteland into her skin.

“Naia,” came Amri’s voice, breaking her out of her trance. “The landstrider.” He crouched beside the landstrider, which lay prone on the ground, whimpering as blood trailed out of its side onto the rocky soil, making tiny rivers in the dust. 

“No,” Naia whispered as she clambered over and placed her hands on its wound. She had only ever healed Gelfling before, but she knew that her mother had managed to heal other creatures in the past. It didn’t always work, but sometimes the connection could be made. She tried to enter the healing trance, but nothing happened. She wanted to shout in frustration, but knew that would only make things worse. 

Finally, a flash, and she saw the small, torn pieces of the landstrider, and began encouraging them to mend. Tiny specks, red and brown and blue, coming together to make regular shapes again. And then they were joined by globs of black, amalgamating together to form larger globs of black, blocking off the arteries…

Naia pulled back in horror. The black ooze, that creature’s dark blood, had leeched from her hands into the landstrider’s wounds. 

“I need to wash my hands,” she said, grabbing for the pack that held their flasks.

“Naia, we need to save the water.”

“I need to save the landstrider.”

“It’s already dead.” 

He was right. The landstrider had stopped whimpering, stopped breathing, and lay still on the dusty ground. And in that moment, all of the frustration and fear and anger that she had been holding back burst free.

“No!” she screamed as she pounded the ground, sending up a small cloud of dust. “It’s all my fault.”

It’s okay,” said Amri, crouching beside her. “It’s not your fault, Naia.”

“The black blood from that creature was still on my hands and it got into the wound…”

“It was already too late. It bled to death.”

“I should have been able to save it.”

“You can’t save everyone, can you?" He pulled down his hood to shade his eyes from the morning light, now intensified since the Rose Sun had risen to join the Great. "I mean, probably no one should be able to do that.”

Naia gazed down at the pattern the landstrider blood had made in the dust, like a a forked river, or the veins and arteries of a living being. “It’s my fault for provoking that thing in the cave," she said. "If I hadn’t made it chase us…”

“…it would have just killed more Spitters. You saved two of them.”

“But now the landstrider is dead. It didn’t ask to be part of this.”

“We didn’t ask to be a part of this either. Whatever that creature was, that’s what killed the landstrider, and the Spitters. Don’t blame yourself.”

She leaned against him, which he was not ready for, and they wobbled briefly before he managed to steady himself and catch her in his arms. For a moment, they sat together in silence, still damp from the pond, covered in dust. 

“We’re going to have to bury the landstrider,” Naia said at last. “How much water do we have?”

“About half a flask each.”

“It’ll have to do until we can get back to the caves. We can at least get some water from the pond before figuring out where to go next.”

They found enough stones to cover the landstrider in a proper cairn, the Great Sun nearly overhead and the Rose Sun halfway up the sky by the time they finished. The dark creature they left in the place where it had fallen.

“So,” said Amri as they sat to rest, legs dangling over the eastern cliffs. “That was an eventful hour or so we just spent. Remember when I almost got drained by the Darkened crystal vein?”

“I think I was right," Naia began, “about killing spreading the blight. Back in the cavern, your Threader started shrieking, which must have been when that creature started slaughtering the Spitters. Right afterwards I noticed the crystal vein beginning to Darken. The violent deaths of three wise creatures of Thra. And now the landstrider is dead too.”

“And that creature thing too. Do you think that counts?”

Naia hadn’t considered that before. She recalled the rage in her heart as she had stabbed the creature to death. _Oh Thra, have I made it worse?_

“I mean,” said Amri, nervous at her silence, “we don’t really know what it is. It may be, like, an abomination in the sight of Thra. Maybe killing it actually un-does the blight a little bit.”

She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s cute, the way you’ll say all sorts of random things to make me feel better.” He smiled, and placed an arm around her shoulders. 

“Once we get back and get some water, we have to send a message to my mother and the other maudras about that creature.”

“How will we do that?”

“We’ll have to figure it out when we get there. We could maybe…”

It was at that moment when what appeared to be a thunder of boulders went hurdling across the waste below them, along with what appeared to be a white-haired Gelfling.

“What was that?” said Amri, grabbing onto her shirt in a slight panic. “Another one? Where are they all coming from?”

“No,” said Naia. “It’s not a monster. It’s Lore, I think.”

“Lore? Like, a story or a legend?”

“No, that’s its name. It’s this kind of…” she struggled for the quickest way to explain, “…rock thing that a Skeksis and an urRu built together and hid under the All-Maudra’s throne until Brea found a magic book that lead her to it and it imprinted itself on her and now it, like, follows her around everywhere.” 

Amri blinked in the bright sunlight.

“It came to Stone-in-the-Wood, briefly,” said Naia.

“I must have missed that part.”

“I wonder if that was Brea with him. She’s supposed to be in Ha’rar.”

“And who’s Brea again?”

“You really missed a lot, didn’t you?”

“If you’ll excuse me, there are like, thousands of spiders with whom I am intimately acquainted whom you have never met.” 

“Brea is the All-Maudra’s sister,” said Naia. “The one who found the shard at Stone-in-the-Wood.”

“Okay, yes. I was there for that.”

“Well, before this all started, she also found Lore.”

“So you’re saying that they’re friendly?”

“Yes.”

“Should we find out what they’re doing here?”

“I guess so,” she said. “At the very least, Lore should be able to carry us back to Grot faster than we can walk.” 

“Do we have a plan for getting down there?”

“Put on the pack,” she said, mentally noting the position of various ledges on the way down the eastern cliffside. The last drop would be a stretch, but if she couldn't stick the landing it would be a couple of bruises at worst. “We’re going to go gliding.”

******

When Deet awoke, cradled in Lore’s arms, she was alone in her body and her mind. The morning sunlight was blinding, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust as she shielded them with her hands. Finally, they focused on the figure, Mother Aughra’s son. He had grown more withered, but he was alive, and whole, and smiling gently.

“Deet?” she heard a familiar voice cry from her right. “Deet!” Oddly enough, she recognized Naia first, even though she knew her much less well. Maybe it was because her old life seemed so far away.

“Amri?” she said in surprise, coming to her feet as he ran towards her with arms outstretched. She almost yelled at him to stop, before remembering that there was no need. And so she just stood there as he wrapped his arms around her, and, after a moment, she wrapped hers around him. _I’m normal again_ , thought Deet. _I’m a normal person_. Tears welled up into her eyes. She tightened her arms around her friend and began to cry heavily into his chest.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Nothing. Everything’s fine now.”

“Do you two know each other?” asked Naia.

“We grew up together in an isolated cave with like, three hundred other people,” said Amri. “Yes, we know each other.” 

Deet broke away from Amri and embraced Naia as well. _I missed hugging people. I might do it all the time now_.

“I thought you were Brea at first,” Naia said. “I knew Lore left with you, but you were supposed to be going to the castle.”

“So much has happened,” said Deet. 

“What about my brother?”

“As far as I know, he and Rian and Hup left the castle over a week ago. I stayed. Or rather, the Darkened One stayed. Which was me. It was all very confusing.”

“But you’re better now?” asked Naia.

“Yes. When Lore and I escaped the castle, he brought me here. To him.”

“More Gelfling.” Squatting among the rocks in his cloak, Raunip had apparently gone unnoticed by Naia and Amri, since they both startled as he spoke. “It is nice to see you after such a long time," he said. “You have changed. Another Grottan, I suppose. And…”

“Drenchen,” said Naia, stiffly, with her arms folded. 

“Of course. Fascinating, the gifts Thra gives its children. But I am glad to see the clans coming together. You did not use to have such strong divisions among you.”

“What do you mean?” asked Amri.

“I am very old, my friend, and I have known the Gelfling for thousands of trine. You always organized yourselves into groups, but the Skeksis and even the urSkeks before them emphasized the divisions among you. They created the All-Maudra as their puppet to rule over you. This is when people began to speak of lords and ladies, and maudras began to act as queens rather than leaders.”

“Who is this person?” asked Naia, with a glower.

“Naia’s mother is a maudra!” said Amri in the cheerful voice that he used when he was nervous.

“It’s fine,” Naia said. “But who is he?”

“He saved me,” said Deet. “He absorbed the Darkening out of me. He's the reason I’m fine now.”

“He looks like Mother Aughra,” said Naia.

“You all seem very familiar with my mother. And yet you have forgotten me completely. Well, no matter.”

“But what are you two doing here?” asked Deet. 

“We were in the caves to the east of the Tomb of Relics,” said Amri, “following the ley line in order to find an unblemished chunk of crystal. But it didn't work. Some deranged creature entered the caves and began slaughtering Arathim. After their deaths, the crystal vein Darkened rapidly. We barely escaped with our lives.”

“Unblemished crystal?” said Raunip. “Ha! You’re looking for its song. Very good. You must have found the spiral, then.”

“Amri, stop giving him so much information," said Naia. She turned to Raunip. “You still haven’t answered my question. I still don't know who you are. For all I know you'll take this information right back to the Skeksis.”

Deet opened her mouth to protest, but Raunip spoke first. 

“My name is Raunip,” he said, bowing. “Many ages past, Mother Aughra fashioned me out of bits of Thra and bits of fallen star. Two thousand trine ago, I saw the urSkeks arrive. I did not trust them. A little less than one thousand trine ago, I saw the urSkeks split into the Skeksis and the urRu. The Skeksis took over the castle and called themselves Lords. I did not trust them. Several hundred trine ago, I arranged for skekGra and urGoh to run into each other, and have a little vision. We joined together and built Lore. And we wrote a book, which I dream-stitched with clues, which it seems the Gelfling have finally found.”

“Brea said she found a book that gave her a vision,” said Deet, hoping her openness would help put Naia’s skepticism at ease. “That’s what led her to Lore.”

Naia’s face was still hard. “If you made this puzzle, can’t you just tell us the answers?”

“No, I can’t, actually. You have to do it. The Gelfling, united. There is no other way. That’s why I stitched the symbol for unity. That’s why in order to find Lore, you had to reject hierarchy among the clans.” 

“That’s all well and good,” said Naia, “but we’ve learned the lesson. We’re unified. Now let’s just get it over with."

“If you found Lore, you’re on the right track. And searching for the song of Crystal of Truth… you said your friend had only a single vision from the book?”

“I think so," said Deet. "A symbol, like this...." She traced a rough outline in the dust of what she remembered of Brea's vision.

“Just the one symbol, then. Not the spiral? If you didn't find the spiral yet, how did you know to look for the Crystal’s song?” 

Deet looked up hopefully at Naia, who stood still, her arms folded across her chest, not quite scowling, but close. “Naia, you were the only one of us there.” 

Naia sighed, but dropped her arms. “Do you really trust him, Deet?” 

“Here,” Deet said, raising a hand. Naia pressed hers to it, and Deet shared, as best as she could remember, her encounter with Raunip that morning, the feeling of the Darkening being pulled out of her, the joy of becoming a person again, of feeling her arms around another for the first time in weeks.

Naia kept her hand pressed to Deet's for a moment after they came out of the dreamfast, but ultimately she relaxed her posture. She turned to Raunip. “The night after the battle in Stone-in-the-Wood,” she began, “myself and my friend Kylan, a dream-stitcher, joined with a Sifan soothsayer and managed to open a pocket of dreamspace so that our friend, a Vapran princess whose mind had merged with an Arathim Threader before her Gelfling body died, could speak with her sisters once again."

“And you had visions," said Raunip, a slight awe in his voice.

“Yeah. Kylan dreamed the stuff about the songs. Mine was of the ley lines—”

“You’d be a dream-healer of course,” interrupted Raunip.

“Yeah. Anyway, Mother Aughra—your mother, I guess—told me to look for an unblemished crystal vein and try to find the song of the untainted Crystal.”

“See, this was unexpected," said Raunip. “The spiral was supposed to lead you to the songs. You found a shortcut. Different clans together, mixing your dream-arts. And you came to it out of concern for your friends, not through any of my humble proddings. That’s incredible. But then again the Gelfling have always exceeded my expectations.”

“What’s this spiral you keep talking about?” asked Amri.

“It’s in the book, the same one your friend found. And actually, you will need it in the end. Do you know where the book is now?”

“In the library in Ha’rar I suppose,” said Naia.

"And your dream-stitcher friend? He should be able to find the stitch.”

“Knowing him, he’s probably also in the library in Ha’rar." said Naia. "Mother Aughra told him to go north and listen for the other song that he heard, the song by the sea. But he’s staying near Ha'rar and he likes books.”

“Well that does seem like it will sort itself out nicely,” said Raunip with a smile. “But just in case it doesn’t, make sure to tell him to look for it. As for your quest, you should head to the Valley of the Standing Stones. A ley line runs right through it. You’ll find your unblemished crystal vein there.”

“And where is that?” asked Naia.

“Follow the border of the Forest and the Plains west towards the sea. The Valley is protected by magic not of Thra, but of the urRu, who live there. Gelfling who approach it find themselves lost in thick mists until they end up wandering back to their starting point. But you, Naia, can follow the ley line. I’ll point you to the right one.”

 _The urRu?_ “Raunip, I can't go to the urRu," said Deet. 

"You certainly can," he said. "If you want to save the Gelfling, and the Podlings, and the Arathim, and all of the creatures of Thra. And if you want to save the Skeksis _and_ the urRu. Heal the Crystal, and you save them all. And you need to go the Valley of the Standing Stones in order to heal the Crystal."

His voice was so warm and his conviction was so easy. And he was right. _I cannot bring the urRu I killed back from the dead. But I can try to save the rest of them._

"All right, I'll go," she said. "Thank you, again. I'm in your debt, Raunip."

"No debt," he said with a smile. "Just friendship. No debts among friends."

“Still, we owe you our thanks,” said Naia. “I’m sorry for my distrust earlier.”

“While the trustfulness of your two friends here is very endearing,” said Raunip, “someone has to be the cautious one.”

“We did grow up in a cave,” Amri said. “There weren't really a lot of strangers to distrust. Well, except for urLii. Who I also trusted implicitly from the first time I met him. So. I don’t know what point I'm making.”

Deet was used to Amri’s ramblings, but Naia's smile as she listened to them was something new. She’d only known the other woman for a short time, but she was fairly certain she'd never seen her smile like that before. 

“Okay," said Naia. “We just need to figure out how to send a message to Ha’rar to let them know where we're going.”

“Raunip,” said Deet, “you said you were going near Wellspring, perhaps…” 

“We have a Threader,” interrupted Naia, a look of realization on her face.

“We do?” asked Deet.

“Yes,” said Amri. He pulled back his cloak to reveal a Threader perched on his shoulder. “I call him Karlak. He’s the one who took over my mind when, well, you know, you were there. Sorry we tried to kill you.”

“Well, it all worked out in the end,” said Deet.

“The point is,” said Naia, “we know there’s at least one other Threader in Ha’rar.”

******

The light of the Great Sun skimmed over the mountaintops surrounding Ha’rar, filtered through the window, and cast its rays onto the paper that Kylan held on his lap. A corner of his mind registered the improved lighting as he carefully etched a series of dots and lines onto the page. Coming to an impasse, he picked up the rock he had dream-stitched the previous night, and entered the memory of the song of the urSkek again. The notes were still odd, but he had at least gotten used to the disorienting nature of the song itself. He came out of the memory and added three more dots to the page.

“Please tell me you haven’t been awake this whole time.” Brea’s voice broke through his focus on the half-completed musical staff. He had been concentrating so hard on his task that he hadn’t noticed her get out of bed.

“I slept,” he said. He made room for her beside him on the window seat, absentmindedly rebalancing the scrolls on his lap. “I woke up at Great Sun dawn. I wanted to get started on this.”

“Well, it’s a few hours of sleep, anyway,” she said, precariously balancing next to him on the narrow seat. “You didn’t want to sit on the sofa?”

Kylan looked up from the page at her room, filled with all sorts of furniture that did look wide and soft and comfortable, but also very fancy and somewhat inscrutable of function. “No, I found all of that very intimidating,” he said.

“The light is better here anyway,” she said, nudging him over. “Can I see?”

He tilted the page into her view. He had drawn a series of seven triangles, small to large, each inside the next, punctuated with dots and intersected with lines. 

“Is this the song?” she asked. “I thought there were supposed to be five triangles in a musical staff.”

“Normally, yes. But some of the notes in the urSkek song are too high or too low to fit into our traditional musical notation,” he said. He felt her tense slightly. “Which I know kind of weirds you out and maybe you’d like to talk about it finally?”

“It’s just that if there are notes we can’t perceive or produce because of the way we’re built, as Gelfling, then…”

“…what if there are things we can never know because of the way we're built, as Gelfling?”

She leaned her head on his shoulder and traced her finger across the page. “I know that I probably can’t know _everything_ , not in a single lifetime, but I want to know that the potential is there at least.”

“Okay, but listen,” he said, “for the missing notes, we can do a fair job of understanding them, even if we can’t perceive them directly.” He placed the scroll on her lap. “Music is a pattern, and we can fit the urSkek notes into the pattern. Some of the missing notes were a turn lower than the lowest notes we Gelfling have, so I drew an extra triangle in the center for those. Some were a turn higher, so I added an extra triangle on the outside. That’s why instead of five triangles, there are seven.”

“So even if we can’t hear the notes, we can predict them with mathematics.”

“Yes.”

“I always knew I liked mathematics,” she said, a hint of optimism returning to her voice. 

“So I think I can transcribe the whole song without any problem,” he said. “The next question though is what to do with the song once I transcribe it. I have no idea how to play the extra notes. I would have to adjust any normal instrument to play them, carve a firca differently or restring a lute somehow. But if I can’t hear the notes as I’m playing them, then there’s no way I can know if I’ve got them right.” 

“Are you trying to make me feel better with a puzzle?” she asked, her finger still absent-mindedly tracing the triangles on the page.

“Is it working?”

“Yes, absolutely,” she replied. 

Brea placed the scroll back in his lap and got up to examine one of the papers tacked to a board above her desk. “The obvious next step is to try to make the song fit with the spiral that we found in the library on your first night here.” 

Kylan squinted at the image of the spiral tacked onto the wall. He knew that spirals were found in the learned works passed down by the Lords of the Crystal, but he certainly hadn’t encountered any such works in the limited library back home. This spiral meandered from the inside out, curling outward like the shell of snail. At various intervals on the spiral path were drawn circles of different colors: black, white, gray, and shades of blue and rose and yellow. The edge was ringed with small dots, some black, and some white.

“They may have nothing to do with each other,” he said.

“Let’s assume for now that all the various weird things that have been happening lately are related,” she said. “Plus, remember how Gyr was painted with the spiral in those books?” 

“That’s true,” he replied. So much had happened since last night in the library that he had almost forgotten. 

“And look at this,” said Brea, indicating the spiral with a pencil in a charming way that he tried not to find too distracting. “Seven turns of the spiral, seven triangles on your staff.”

“Seven is a lucky number,” he said. “It could be a coincidence.” 

“No, look. Here.” She ripped the paper off of the board and placed it in front of him. 

“You could have just removed the tack,” he said. 

“Yes, right, but look, the three black dots here, on the outside border of the spiral, we weren’t sure what they were for…”

“…we thought maybe they represented the Suns…”

“…and maybe they do, but they can also be the corners of a triangle. Can you dream-etch your triangles over the spiral, with the outermost one lined up with the dots?” 

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try.” He placed his uninjured hand over the spiral and felt the heat of the dream-etch burn the image of the musical staff into the paper where it rested on his legs. “So now what?” 

“Follow the notes.” She knelt down beside him and examined the page. “Where’s the first note of the song?” 

“Here.” He indicated a dot on the second triangle of the staff. 

“All right,” she said, placing a finger on the dot, “it’s here on the third twist of the spiral. Trace the path from the third twist outwards and it brings us to…a green circle.” 

“Why outwards?” 

“In the ancient books, spirals are always read outwards,” she said. “But what does a green circle mean?” 

“Oh, those are notes,” Kylan said, surprising himself. _I guess my mind was putting that one together while I wasn’t paying attention_. “Actually, now that we’re in this frame of mind it seems obvious. But we don’t know the shade.” 

Brea's eyes darted across the page for a moment, her finger still on the green circle, before she turned to look up at him. “What are you talking about, exactly?”

“You know how musical notes are named, right?” he said. “Rose, orange, yellow, green, sky, blue, and purple.” He tapped a circle of each color on the spiral as he said each name, scooting her finger aside when he got to green. “It’s just a naming convention; on a normal staff they’re represented with simple dots and lines, not colors, but I guess the spiral is taking the names literally.”

“So it’s telling us that the first note should be played as green?” 

“As a shade of green. But we don’t know the shade. That must be what these other five circles are for: black, half-black, gray, half-white, and white. Those are how the shades are named, although again, on a staff we usually represent them using dots and lines.”

“Where’s the second note?” she asked.

“Here on the third triangle.”

“So,” she said, tracing a path from the second note along the spiral to the half-white circle, “some of the notes on the staff connect to colors on the spiral, and some to shades.”

“But it looks like none of them connect to both the shade and the color,” he said. 

She sighed in frustration and leaned her head on his arm, but she didn’t take her eyes off of the paper in his lap, and he saw her mind moving behind them as she stared. The Rose Sun had risen to join the Great Sun and the mixed light, rose and yellow, fell softly on both the page and her loose hair. Thoughts of songs and spirals drifted out of his mind as the warmness of the moment filled it instead. 

“What was the first note of the urSkek song originally?” Brea asked, still focused on the spiral.

“Uh, half-black rose,” he said, looking back down at the staff. “So if we’re on the right track, this spiral acts as some sort of… transposition code, I guess? But it’s incomplete. We know the half-black rose note is supposed to be green, but we don’t know what shade of green.” 

“What if we just assume that it’s supposed to stay half-black?” 

“We could. But that won’t help us with the notes that are too high or too low…”

“…because those are either above black or below white,” she finished. 

“We can draw in some extra circles and give them names like ‘double-black’ or ‘double-white’ but that doesn’t help me hear them, or play them. And we still have those extra white dots around the border, actually, these… huh.” 

“Three,” she said, tapping the page. “Three!” 

"So we could use them to frame another staff," he said. "Plus the area the second set of dots covers is smaller than the first. Meaning the usual one, with only five triangles, not seven.” He stretched out his hand, and the second staff, empty of notes, appeared in position. 

“Maybe," said Brea, "if we follow the first note of the urSkek song, it tells us what color note to play, and if we follow the first note of the second song, it gives us the shade. And vice-versa for the second note. And so on.” 

“So the spiral is a key that turns two songs into one song," he said. "And right now Naia is, coincidentally, in Grot looking for the second song from my vision.”

“So we know what the next step is,” Brea said, her face lighting up. _She really loves knowing the next steps of things._ “We need the other song, and then we can put them together and get a new one.” 

“And then… what?” he asked.

“Play it and find out what happens, obviously.” She climbed back up onto the window seat next to him. “What do you think will happen?” The light of two suns shone upon them both, and the eagerness in her voice was bright.

There was that warm moment again. But he barely had the chance to enjoy it when it was interrupted by a firm knock at the door. Brea rolled her eyes and walked heavily across the room. She opened the door to reveal a servant holding a silver tray with a folded piece of paper upon it. “Your sister sent this note, Your Highness,” he said. _Servants and silver trays are decidedly less warm_ , Kylan thought. 

Brea thanked the servant and brought the note back to the window seat, so that he could read it over her shoulder.

_Brea. There is much urgent news from Grot and the castle. Please come to the throne room at once. Bring Kylan with you._

“How does she _know_ already?" Brea asked. "We've only been together for what, eight hours?"

“That is definitely…” he struggled for a word, “...unsettling. But I’m more concerned about the part that says _urgent news_. _Urgent_ is not _good_.”

“You’re right,” she said. “We should hurry.” 

As they rushed to get ready, he tried to hold on to the warm morning, and the progress they had made with the song and the spiral. But around the edges of his mind, the battle with the Skeksis, the horrors he had seen at the castle when he and Naia had gone searching for Gurjin, everything that had happened before he had arrived in Ha’rar came slipping back in, and he felt the oppressive weight of the past brushing up against their future. 

******

As the combined heat of three Suns at their zeniths beat down upon his heavy raiment, skekTek remembered why he seldom left the shadowy coolness of the castle. Their chariots had not been able to climb the rocky ridges of the mountains, and they had been forced to go on foot as they tracked the Garthim through Domrak. The dank caves had been slightly unnerving, littered as they were with the corpses of Darkened beasts slaughtered by the Garthim, but at least they had been cool and moist. 

_Dreadful wasteland_ , he thought, and was about to say, but when he opened his mouth he instead choked on a breeze full of dust. 

“I see it,” came the voice of skekUng well in front of him. “Below the ridge.”

“Dead or alive?”

“Dead, it would seem.”

 _Well, if it’s dead, then there’s no need to hurry_. He walked with a slow gait, dragging his robes over the dusty ground behind him. He prodded the Garthim, clanged on its hard shell, inspected the black pit where its face should be. “The creature has, indeed, perished,” he proclaimed. _Good thing we have five more back at the castle_. “Gelfling?”

“These are knife wounds,” said skekUng, examining the creature’s underbelly. “But how could a Gelfling flip it over?”

“A mystery indeed. The Gelfling are hardly clever with machines and devices. Perhaps the creature stumbled, or fell from a height?” His mechanical eye spotted an irregularity in the rocky landscape. 

“My dear friend skekUng, is that a cairn? Perhaps some of the Gelfling perished in the struggle.”

SkekUng walked over to check the cairn. SkekTek removed a fan from the folds of his robes, unfurled it, and took small solace in its slight breeze. 

“Landstrider remains,” reported skekUng, after removing a few of the rocks. 

“Ah,” said skekTek, “A landstrider. Its forelegs acting as twin levers could supply enough force to overturn the beast. A clever solution, although knowing the mental limitations of Gelfling, one that they surely stumbled upon by chance. But did the Gelfling survive? If it is still nearby we could take it to the castle as a prize for the Emperor. It has been so long since the Skeksis last experienced the rejuvenating power of Gelfling essence.”

“There’s blood on the ground, but it’s difficult to tell with the shifting dust if it belongs to landstrider or Gelfling. The Gelfling must have survived long enough to bury the landstrider at least.” SkekUng turned his attention back to the dead Garthim. “I am sorry for the loss of your creation.”

“A necessary part of the scientific process. By examining the corpse I can analyze its vulnerabilities and improve future generations. Ballast to counteract the levering force of the landstriders, perhaps. More armor on the underbelly. Have to deal with the instinct to return to Domrak as well of course. Or…”

“Or what?”

“Some part of the creature must be in tune with its Arathim roots,” said skekTek. “We may be able to use that against them.”

“An excellent idea, Lord Scientist,” said skekUng, returning to skekTek’s side by the dead Garthim. “But a mystery remains. How could the Garthim destroy an entire cavern of Darkened beasts and yet be felled by a Gelfling on a landstrider?”

“Ah, that, my dear friend, can be explained with mere scientific principle. The Garthim is powered by the Darkening; the Darkened creatures have no power against it. But the Gelfling and landstrider were not Darkened, and therefore the Garthim had no counter to their brute strength and good luck.”

A noise came from behind the ridge behind them. SkekUng shifted position to peer around the edge.

“Is it Gelfling?” asked skekTek. 

“No,” groaned skekUng. “It’s the crone.”

“What’s all this then?” said Aughra as she ambled into view, leaning heavily on her walking stick. She looked as sun-baked and dust-ravaged as he felt. “I sensed something very wrong with the song of Thra, but its source kept moving, trailing behind it a neverending path of discord, until it got here and stopped.”

“Honored Aughra, we are simply retrieving one of the Scientist’s ingenious creations…”

“Creation? More like abomination,” she said, banging her walking stick against the Garthim’s shell. “This is no creature of Thra, and yet it is. It is of blight, and yet it lives, or lived. What did you do?”

“One such as you would not understand the technicalities,” skekTek heard himself say, although he knew very well that she could. But he was hot, and tired, and it had been so long since he had last tasted essence.

Aughra’s face softened, and some part of him registered disappointment in it. But the look was fleeting, and she soon made her face hard again. “I understand that this creature destroyed a cave full of Darkened beasts and killed a handful of Spitters before it met its end. What do you intend to do with it?”

“Surely Mother Aughra need not concern herself with the private affairs of the Skeksis,” said skekUng. skekTek winced. _She’s not going to respond well to that._

“Ah, Aughra forgot,” she said, pointing her walking stick menacingly at skekUng. “This one has been away from the castle. So perhaps skekUng does not know that the most recent affairs of the Skeksis have all been poison, murder, and abomination.”

“The creature is dead,” said skekTek sharply. “So it is no longer of any concern to you.”

“And yet there are more,” said Aughra. “I know you. You would not make just one, and then allow it to perish here.”

“Mother Aughra,” said skekUng. “You are correct. I have been away from the castle. I have heard of the drainings of the Gelfling, a most regrettable development. But this creature has nothing to do with that unfortunate matter. As you have seen, it cleaned the Darkened creatures from Domrak. We are using it to clear the blight. However, we did not anticipate it attacking the Spitters, so when it did so, we were forced to put it down.”

“Pretty sure you’re lying,” she said after a pause. “But there’s nothing more for me to learn from this empty shell or from duplicitous Skeksis. I won’t give up though. This isn’t the last you’ll see of Aughra.”

SkekTek watched as she sauntered off back west, muttering to herself. A memory deep within him was sorry to part with her on such poor terms, but it did not make it to the surface of his mind. 

He himself spent the next several hours muttering words of the most uncouth nature as he and skekUng struggled to affix the creature’s corpse to a sledge, then drag it by hand the long way around Domrak, back to the chariots. As his hands blistered against the rough rope and dust coated his feet, he cursed the three Suns overhead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. That was a long one. Next week we start Part 3! Also, I promise there are no more four-page discursions on Gelfling musical theory.


	9. (3.1) Through the Mists

Part 3.1 Through the Mists  
_A relaxing morning. Making a connection. The table, aflame. Mineral hunting. A normal conversation. Changing the dynamic._  
POVs: Seladon, Tavra, Onica, Naia, Rian, Seladon

******

The Great Sun had just risen over the horizon when Seladon awoke. The morning was clear and cloudless, warmer than the past few days had been. By the time she made it to the throne room, the yellow light of the Great Sun was reflecting off the snow-capped mountains through the windows so that the entire room was bathed in a bright, cheerful light. Seladon leaned into the light and felt herself melt into it, her left hand flickering slightly.

 _Maybe today will be a nice, peaceful day_. A break from day after day of dispassionately planning the dismantling of her kingdom in the face of a vague but inevitable threat. The Rose Sun soon cleared the mountaintops, and the joint light of two suns filled the room with warm swaths of pink and yellow.

The peace of the morning was shattered, alas, when her dead sister’s secret girlfriend, attached to her dead sister’s new spider body, rushed into the room and began speaking in her dead sister’s voice.

“Seladon,” she said. “I have an urgent message from Amri.” 

Seladon took a deep breath, processing this new development, only to wrinkle her brow as her mind hit a stumbling block.

“Who?” she asked. 

“The Grottan who went with Naia and the Arathim to Grot. He still has his Threader with him, and we were able to communicate through the Arathim network.”

Seladon was about to respond, when the herald entered the throne room. “Your Majesty, Gurjin, son of Maudra Laesid of the Drenchen is his here to see you, with Rian, son of the late Captain Ordon of the Stonewood and… a Podling.”

“Thank you,” she said, noting how it seemed strange that the herald had followed the usual conventions of social rank in listing the visitors, even in these times when everything else about the world seemed to be changing. _I guess we didn’t quite change everything else about society when we cast aside our clan divisions._

“All-Maudra,” said Rian, limping in on a crutch, “we bring you news from the castle.” But it was easy to read the news in their faces.

“It didn’t work, did it?” she said.

Rian shook his head.

“And something has happened in Grot,” said Seladon.

“Grot?” asked Gurjin. “My sister’s in Grot.”

“Naia’s fine,” said Tavra’s voice through Onica’s body, which startled all three of the new arrivals, especially Hup, who, Seladon realized, might have never even seen a Threader before. 

This was a stressful situation. There were threads of information coming from multiple sources that would have to integrated, separated, and then dealt with properly. _This is what I do well_ , Seladon thought. _This is where my training with mother still comes in useful. I can handle this._

“All right,” she said. “Is there anything else that I need to know?”

This time Onica’s spoke with her own voice, rather than Tavra’s. “We think we found the song that Kylan was supposed to find. From the vision in Stone-in-the-Wood. Last night, he kept having these hallucinations that turned out to be memories belonging to Gyr.”

“And who’s Gyr?” asked Seladon.

“Gyr the Songteller.”

“ _That_ Gyr?” 

“Yes. I managed to stabilize the visions while Kylan and Brea went into Gyr’s memories and found the song. Kylan dream-stitched it into a couple of rocks.” She pulled one out her pocket.

“And where are Kylan and Brea now?” asked Seladon.

“Probably still in her room,” said Onica. As she spoke, her face reflected a sudden realization that she should have probably phrased this information in a vaguer manner, but it was already too late as the words came tumbling out of her mouth.

Seladon was silent for a moment. Then she grabbed a scrap of paper, scribbled a note, and handed it to a servant.

“Take this to my sister,” she said. “All right. Something terrible has happened in Grot, but Naia is fine, and Amri, who is a person, is also fine, and the Crystal is _not_ healed, and my sister and her boyfriend, which apparently is a thing that is happening, chased down the memory of song by a legendary bard who’s been dead for a thousand trine. Is there anything else to report?”

Rian rocked nervously on his crutch. “We traveled up the river to Ha’rar with skekSa. She dropped us off on the docks and then headed for Cera-Na. Or so she said.”

Seladon took a deep breath, held it, and let it go.

“Onica? SkekSa is the one who used to sail with the Sifa, right?”

“Yes. The Lord Mariner.”

“Do you think she’s an immediate threat?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. She was away at sea when the Skeksis started draining Gelfling.”

“And you say she helped you?” Seladon asked Rian.

“She saved us from skekZok when we were in the woods. But I still don’t know if I trust her.” 

“Right.” Time to be a leader. “Will anything change if we put off our discussion for twenty minutes or so?”

Everyone was quiet. It seemed not.

“This is what we’re going to do,” said Seladon. “Have any of you had breakfast?”

A few shaken heads, and utterances of _no_. “In that case,” said Seladon, “we will sit down and eat breakfast, and enjoy it. Perhaps Rian will tell us how his leg is doing and what sort of medical attention it may require. And then once Brea and Kylan are here, we will tell each other everything that has happened so we don’t have to repeat ourselves.”

“Aldon,” Seladon said to the herald, “could you please have breakfast for seven brought to the throne room?”

“Including the Podling, Maudra?”

“Hup is our guest,” Seladon said with a sigh. _I suppose it will take some time to completely change the social order._ She was, quite honestly, still not sure how Gelfling society was supposed to _be_ , and how the Gellfing were supposed to fit in with the rest of their world. And of course Brea wasn't helping matters by jumping headlong into a relationship with someone who was as far from her social status as possible. 

The Dying Sun managed to make it high enough into the sky to send a few oblique red-violet rays into the throne room to join the yellow and the rose. Seladon watched the multi-hued light fall on the white tablecloth that the servants had just finished setting up and imagined disappearing into it one more time.

******

Tavra sat perched upon a medium-sized orange seafruit, her spindly legs balancing delicately upon its soft skin. With her primary diet these days one of crawlies and raw fish, she usually let the Threader whose body she shared have free reign of their mind during meals. Her new body couldn’t digest the fruit below her, but the Gelfling mind within the spider body could appreciate its sweet smell, which brought with it the memories of many breakfasts past with her sisters and her mother, when all of them had been alive and whole.

“Rian!” Tavra sensed Brea's voice and the pounding of her feet on the tile floor as she rushed into the throne room. She came into Tavra’s view and embraced her friend, not noticing his injured leg until he winced in pain. “Oh, sorry,” she said. 

The previously-restrained table burst into laughter and rapid conversation among Brea, Kylan, Gurjin, and Rian, with Hup joining in at various intervals. Tavra watched her sister and her friends and felt, oddly, a little old, and a little lonely. And suddenly, she knew that the time was right for something she had been putting off.

Tavra clambered down from her seafruit and scuttled over to Seladon. She reached out with one spindly arm and gently rested it upon her sister’s hand.

“She wants to talk to you,” said Onica. 

“What?” asked Seladon, lost in thought. Tavra looked up at her sister’s face, so much larger than before. Suddenly, she wanted to retreat again, maybe because seeing a face she had known her whole life from so radically different a perspective reminded her keenly of her own transformation. But before she could run away, Seladon spoke again.

“Tavra? You mean, like…” Seladon put a hand to the back of her neck, as if imagining what the connection would be like. “Yes, of course.” 

Seladon offered her arm to Tavra, who scrambled up to her shoulder, then got up from the table and walked over to the one window that had always been Tavra’s favorite, the one from which the sea could be seen in the distance through the mountains. 

Tavra climbed to her sister’s neck and, as she had plenty of practice with Onica, navigated their minds so that it seemed to the two of them as if they were standing side-by-side at the window, Tavra in her old body.

Now that they were connected, however, Tavra didn’t know how to start the conversation. _How are you?_ seemed too simple. _So this morning I was awoken by the sensation of my body being ripped in half as some dread creature began tearing into Spitters a hundred leagues away in Grot_ seemed to be a bit heavy for a starter. Tavra was surprised, however, when Seladon spoke first. 

“Do you remember when we were little, and Ma tried to teach us about becoming one with the light?”

 _Ma_. Tavra hadn’t thought about their other mother in a very long time. “I was so little,” Tavra responded, shaking her head. 

“You were there, though, during our lessons.” With that, Seladon shared an image through their connected minds, a memory of the two of them as little girls, and their other mother, tall and in the gray cloak of a paladin.

In the memory, the three of them stood in the snow in the courtyard, the early morning light of the Great Sun filling the entire space. The light seemed to brighten, blinding Tavra’s eyes, and when her eyes refocused again, Ma was gone. In the memory, little Seladon seemed to flash in and out of existence, until she too disappeared into the morning light. Tavra remembered the next part of the memory, the part where no matter how hard she tried, she could never make even as much as a little finger flicker.

“I remember you joined our lessons when you turned four,” said Seladon, as they drifted out of the memory, “so I suppose it would have only been for a couple of months before she died. Recently, it’s been kind of coming back to me at odd moments. I stand in the sunlight and I feel like I can just melt into it, metaphorically. But then also I kind of do, literally.”

“Onica said you were the most mystical of the three of us.”

“Well that’s not much competition,” Seladon said with a smile. “I don’t know why but I’ve been thinking about Ma a lot lately. Maybe because of how much I messed things up with Mother. Maybe if Ma had lived, things would have been different.”

“You don’t have to be so hard on yourself, Seladon.”

“Yes I do. I have to be hard on myself because I’ve made many terrible mistakes. So whatever we decide to do going forward, I can’t mess it up. Maybe that’s why I keep trying to disappear.”

“I’ve told you this so many times that I could just pick a memory and share it with you instead of saying it again. But Brea and I cannot do what you do. All of those little meetings, and all those trine practicing etiquette and diplomacy… you have all of that experience. Yes, you made some bad mistakes. Really, really big, bad mistakes. But the foundation of this job is managing all of those million little details day in and day out. And you have that foundation built into you.”

“And what about the big mistakes?”

“Oh, you’ll just have to stop making those.”

Seladon laughed out loud. “I've missed you.”

“I've missed you too,” Tavra said, taking her sister's arm in their joint minds. _And I miss Brea._

“You two will sort it out,” said Seladon, reading Tavra's emotion in their linked minds. “I'm actually trying to imagine sharing a mind with Brea. I predict it would be very... hectic."

Tavra smiled. “A tiny little Brea in your head trampling all over the place, trying to peek at things.”

Seladon laughed in response, but her expression soon transitioned, and she turned her gaze back to the window. “She doesn't want to be around me either," she said. “She comes to all the meetings and helps me with tasks and things. But I make her uncomfortable.”

“She may be a little uncomfortable,” said Tavra. “But it sounds to me like she’s trying very hard to be with you anyway.”

“Maybe,” replied Seladon, but Tavra could tell she was unconvinced. _She needs to figure out how to see things from Brea's point of view_. Tavra was about to try to prod her in such a direction, when Seladon spoke first. 

“Well. I’m glad we did this,” she said. “Any time you want to talk to me, please let me know. It’s a little odd, but I think I can get used to it.”

Tavra could tell from the tone of voice that the conversation was over. “I will," she said. She took one last look at the sea through Gelfling eyes, and then broke the connection with Seladon. She felt the rumble of mixed voices as they returned to the table, Onica's voice coming from Seladon's left, and, from somewhere on the far side of the table, mixed in with the general noise of the throne room, she was just able to pick out Brea’s.

******

Onica vaguely followed the conversation of the five friends reuniting around the breakfast table, but as often as not cast an eye on Seladon, standing alone at the window in silence, a full range of facial expressions dancing across her face, from frown to smile to pensive brow to the occasional burst of laughter. _So that’s what I look like to others when I’m talking to Tavra. I must really weird people out._ Good. Weirding people out worked for her image.

“I believe that we have all been refreshed,” said Seladon, returning to the table. “So now we must discuss the business at hand.” _The business at hand_ , thought Onica. Such an odd way of phrasing _whether or not we can stave off the end of the world_.

“If I may, Maudra,” said Rian. “We were talking, and maybe it would be easiest if we shared our information through a dreamfast.” 

Onica had definitely not been paying attention to that part of the conversation. But it would be easier than talking, plus it would give her the opportunity, with Tavra, to push at one of the limits of their new Arathim abilities. “If that’s the case,” she said, “we should try to make contact with Amri and everyone, so they can join us.”

“Can we do that?” asked Seladon. “Connect them to the dreamfast via the Arathim network?”

Onica shrugged. “We’ll never know until we try. It’s up to Tavra though.” Tavra replied by scuttling up to Onica’s neck. She felt a now-familiar pinch as Tavra connected to her mind. “Just let us know when you’re ready," said Onica.

“Hold on,” said Brea. “You said Amri and everyone. Who’s everyone?”

“Naia, of course,” Onica replied. “And some other Grottan named Deet.”

Hup looked up from his plate, loaded with fruits and cheeses. “Deet?” he asked.

“Deet’s with Naia?” asked Rian. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I’m sorry, do you know this Deet person?” asked Onica.

“Yes, of course we do,” Rian replied.

“I’m sorry,” said Onica. “Not everybody knows everybody.”

“I’m still not sure who Amri is,” said Brea. 

“All right,” said Seladon. “Clearly a dreamfast will be faster than us talking around in circles like we are now. Rian and Gurjin, you’re in charge of filling in Hup when we’re done.”

“Uh-uh,” said Hup, pointing to Kylan. “Spriton.” This was followed by a flurry of words in Podling.

“Uh, yeah,” said Kylan when Hup had finished, "he says he’s quite fond of Rian and Gurjin, but he'd like to have a conversation in Podling for once.”

“You can understand Podling?" asked Rian.

“Yeah, the population of Sami Thicket is split half and half between Gelfling and Podlings. Most of us understand each other’s language even if we don't speak it.” Hup let out another flurry of syllables. “He says why do you think he understands Gelfling so well?”

Onica tried not to see the tepid look on Seladon’s face while Kylan was speaking. _You really screwed up on that one_ , Tavra said in their joint mind. “Tavra says she’s ready to start,” Onica said aloud in response.

“Well then,” Seladon said, as Onica felt Tavra giving her mental side-eye, “let's begin. Hup, pardon us.” Hup made a short bow and then began snacking on a handful of berries.

Onica readied herself for the dizzying connection to the Arathim network. She was no stranger to visions, but the rush of flying in a thousand directions at once, across all corners of the Skarith Land, filtered through Tavra’s consciousness and the Threader’s consciousness each joined with hers, was nevertheless disorienting. She let Tavra and the Threader lead the way, searching through the network for Amri’s Threader. The layers of consciousness piled on as Amri connected to his Threader and accepted the plan.

In the Citadel of Ha’rar, six Gelfling joined their hands in a circle, and a few hundred leagues away in the eastern wasteland, three Gelfling did the same. And then, it began.

_In the Castle of the Crystal, the Grottan girl, Deet, sat on the Emperor’s throne, crackling with violet power, and the Skeksis cowered before her._

_In the caves beneath the Mountains of Grot, a cavern full of unblemished crystal glowing blue in the mosslight._

_In the library of Ha’rar, launched from an ancient book, a spiral in the sky._

_In the Crystal Chamber, the Darkened Crystal whirred, shook, threw off Rian, and spit out the shard._

_In the Tomb of Relics, six Arathim Spitters shrieked in terror at a malicious creature unlike anything natural._

_On the shores of the Silver Sea, a single, lonely song, only half-heard beneath the light of the Second Sister._

_On the shores of the Black River, a boat carrying a lone Skeksis drifted quietly into view, the slight lapping of the water against its wooden sides the only sound in the night._

_In a tent by the sea, three Gelfling entered dreamspace, while a Threader stood watch._

_On the edge of a cliff above the waste, a landstrider, lying dead._

_In the wasteland below, a creature made of rocks and a strange figure, of the race of Aughra, running off into the distance._

In the flurry of images, their stories emerged: the failed attempt to heal the Crystal, Deet’s days at the castle and her flight to the waste, the slaughter at the Tomb of Relics and the unnatural creature that perpetrated it, the discovery of the song of the urSkek, Raunip, son of Aughra, who had set so much of their quest into motion, who had healed Deet, who ridden off to be with his co-conspirators one last time.

At last, the stories ended, sorted out in a collection of minds. As they came out of the trance, slowly lowering their hands, a blue light flashed, and a dream etching scorched through the table and into the floor. 

Onica jumped up as the table collapsed beneath them and the tablecloth went up in flame. 

“All right,” said Seladon. “The table just caught on fire.”

“It was a dream-etching,” said Onica. “Quite a powerful one.”

“Something like this happened before,” said Kylan. “In the Podling inn.”

“That’s right,” said Rian. “There was a large group of us dreamfasting then as well… who was it?”

“I was there,” said Tavra, through Onica’s body. “And Rian, Kylan, Naia, and…”

“My father,” said Rian. “But the dream-etch wasn’t as strong. We etched the table, but we didn’t slice it in half.”

“I don’t know why it was so strong this time,” said Onica, fluidly taking control of her vocal tract from Tavra, “but it’s common knowledge among the Sifa that this sort of thing happens occasionally with large dreamfasts. Abstract dream-etchings that no one intends to make, they just pop up of their own accord. We sometimes use them as a form of divination.”

“I’ve read about the concept of large dreamfasts triggering dream-etchings,” said Brea. “But I always figured it was just hearsay.”

“Onica, do you recognize the pattern?” asked Kylan, gesturing to the dream-etching they had just made.

“Seeing as how half of it burned up with the table, there’s not much to work with.” 

“We can discuss the dream-etching business later,” said Seladon, as servants entered to clean up the scraps of table. “We need to solidify plans with Naia.” 

Onica seamlessly transfered control over to Tavra, who gave it to the Threader, who interfaced with Amri and his Threader with ease. Onica had the fascinating experience of feeling the voice of Amri, a person she had never met, hundreds of leagues away, reverberating through her own body. 

“Hi. Uh, hello everyone? Can you hear me?”

Onica, and Tavra within her mind, saw the matching bemused looks on Seladon and Brea’s faces and had to struggle to keep a chuckle from disrupting the delicate connection of the several layers of consciousness currently at play.

“We can hear you,” said Seladon at last.

“Right. So, our plan is to get to the Valley of the Standing Stones, which should have an unDarkened crystal vein we can use. Our landstrider is dead, so not completely sure how that will happen, but we’ll figure it out.”

“May I speak?” asked Rian. “In Stone-in-the-Wood, we had rumors of the Valley of the Standing Stones, that it was an odd place. Travelers who got too close would become enclosed in some kind of mist until they lost their way, only to find themselves back where they started. I think the Spriton have similar tales.”

“I was born within a league of the Valley,” said Kylan. “Everyone always just said that the whole place was cursed.”

“Right,” said Amri, “Right, so according to Raunip, this, you know, weird guy we just met in the middle of the wasteland, but, like you all just saw, he sucked the Darkening out of Deet, so I’m fairly sure he’s legit. Anyway, he said that it’s where the urRu live. So I guess the mists are just to keep people out? But, like, in a kind, gentle way, the way the urRu are? And he said that if Naia can see ley lines, we should be able to follow one through the mists into the the Valley, so…that’s the plan.”

“We have to unite the two songs,” said Brea. “We figured that out earlier this morning. The spiral is like, a…”

“Transposition key,” said Kylan.

“Right,” said Brea. “It’s designed to take the urSkek song and the song of the Crystal of Truth and output a new song.”

“To what end?” asked Seladon.

“We don’t know yet,” said Brea.

“But the urRu might know,” said Rian. “They can be avoidant, but if Naia and Amri and Deet are going there anyway, it can’t hurt to ask.”

“All right,” said Seladon. “So we’ll send a team to meet them at the Valley with the spiral and Gyr’s song.”

“Once we’re there, we’ll contact you again via the Threaders and tell you how to meet us,” Amri said through Onica.

“It’s going to be difficult to sneak south past the castle again,” said Rian.

“I’m not sure where exactly this Valley is,” said Onica, borrowing her own voice back, “but it may be possible to travel by sea. Sail down the western coast, then go over the mountains.”

“If we manage to find the place, we’ll try to figure out if that will work,” said Amri. “We’ll be in touch. And, uh, it was nice to meet most of you for the first time.” The connection broke, and Onica was briefly alone with Tavra, before the Threader removed itself and then she was a single mind in a single body again. 

Onica stared down at the singed table beneath their feet. She had a good feeling about this dream-etching, even if they couldn’t read it. Together, they had once again pushed at the boundaries of dreamspace. It wasn't quite a vision of the future, but she had the feeling that they might be getting somewhere.

******

Three midday suns beat down on the rock, their heat burning into Naia’s hands as her mind connected with stone below in the spot that Raunip had shown her. Her mind found the ley line and followed it over the hills and through the mountains, at least as far as the Black River. “I know which direction we should go in,” she said, breaking the link. “Although we’ll have to find the ley line again once we get to the river. There’s a small pool about half a league away where we can fill up with water. We'll have to walk, I guess, unless we can think of something else.”

“Oh, actually, we thought of something else,” said Amri.

“Who’s we?” asked Naia. 

“Me and Karlak. And, you know, the others,” he said, making a wiggling gesture with his hand that Naia eventually realized was supposed to be a scuttling spider.

A few minutes later, the two Spitters that they had saved came creeping towards them, one long, slinking leg at a time, and, upon reaching the three Gelfling, bowed before them so that they could climb onto their backs.

Naia and Deet rode one Spitter, with Amri wearing the pack on the other. As the midday suns grew hotter, the wasteland grew somehow dustier, and even with the leather panels on her jacket covering them, Naia felt her gills drying out. She cradled Deet in front of her, as the smaller girl, exhausted from her long trip across the Skarith Land, had fallen asleep shortly into their ride. Beside her, Amri sat tall on his Spitter, squinting in the bright noon light, despite having pulled his hood low over his eyes. 

By the time they reached the pool, fed by a spring coming out of the mountainside, Naia had a splitting headache from the dry heat, and she was afraid to touch her shriveled gills. Amri stumbled half-blind off the Spitter and began to drink. Naia woke up Deet and they drank as well before filling up the flasks. Naia gently unfastened the straps of leather at her collar and prepared to dump some of the water on her neck.

“You should just go in,” said Amri. “We’re done drinking.”

Naia looked in the pool. It seemed deep enough to cover her head and then some. She gave into the temptation and plunged in, letting herself sink to the bottom, where she stayed for a good ten minutes. The bottom of the pool was covered in various water-grasses, and, an expert in knowing which ones were good to eat, Naia gathered enough for all of them. It felt like days since they had last eaten anything.

“I brought us a snack,” said Naia as she surfaced. 

“You’re right,” said Deet in wonder to Amri, “she isn’t dead.”

“And she brought us slimy pond-grass. To eat.”

“I ate, like, so much moss for you,” said Naia.

“Fair enough,” he replied. 

“Actually, it’s quite good,” said Deet. “I don’t remember if I’ve actually eaten anything in a week. I would have died, right? If I hadn’t.” She shrugged and took another bite of pond-grass.

Refreshed, they journeyed on, and soon found themselves in the heart of the mountains. Although the path was steep, they were now at a low enough elevation that the way was covered with trees and bushes, and the green-scented air cooled and grew moist again. They set up camp at Rose Sun dusk, and decided to set out again during the hours between the setting of the Second Sister and Great Sun dawn, relying on the keen eyes of the two Grottan to guide them by starlight down to the Black River. At the river, they parted with the Spitters as Naia swam her two friends across in the early dawn twilight.

As they finally arrived at the Plains, the light of the Great Sun rising behind them cast a rippling path of golden light across the tall grasses towards the horizon. When the light of the Dying Sun added its violet-red hues shortly after, Naia realized that it must have been at least a month since she had first left home, if the Dying Sun had crossed paths with the Rose Sun again. 

“So, is there, like, a road or something?” asked Amri, squinting into the Plains. He had a point. The grass covering the hills before them was easily taller than a Gelfling, with no obvious path through it.

“We should be able to follow the treeline,” said Naia. “The Valley is supposed to lie on the border of the Woods and the Plains.”

“We could fly part of the way,” said Deet.

“I can’t fly,” said Naia.

“You can glide, though right? We can climb up one of these trees here, and I’ll hold onto Naia, and Naia will hold onto Amri. Naia’s wings help us glide, while I can keep us aloft for as long as possible, and steer if need be.” Her enthusiasm was very sweet, even if Naia was skeptical of the idea.

“I’m imagining this happening and it looks silly,” said Naia.

“I think it will look kind of cool,” said Deet.

“Brave Naia, afraid of looking silly?” taunted Amri. “When the fate of the Gelfling is at stake?” Naia pressed her lips together to stifle a smile. _Am I really going to let him tease me into doing this?_

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s pick a tree.”

After a few false starts in which they did, indeed, look silly, as far as Naia was concerned, they managed to coast along successfully for several leagues, with a few breaks to eat from their remaining supplies. 

And so it was, many hours later, that three bedraggled Gelfling and one Threader found themselves beneath the light of the two Sisters in a clearing amongst scattered trees to the north and endless tall grasses to the south, intercut with increasingly large rocky outcroppings to the west. In the twin moonlight, a silver-pink mist wove itself among the grass, the trees, the rocks. 

Naia placed a hand on one of the rocks and entered the dream-healing trance, as she had practiced many times in the caves. But deep within in the caves they had been so close much closer to the crystal veins than they were up here on the surface, with all the layers of soil beneath them, and without a hint in the right direction like the one from Raunip earlier, she had trouble picking up the vein.

“I need help,” she said, coming out of the trance. “I need you two to help me find the ley line. I can’t find it by myself. It’s too far down.”

“But didn’t Mother Aughra say that you were the one who had to do it?” asked Deet. “We don’t know how.” 

“Mother Aughra said it wasn’t about natural talent or any one person or any one clan,” said Naia. “All Gelfling are connected to the Crystal, all Gelfling can manipulate dreamspace. I was forced to stretch the dream-healing trance that I normally do with living things to unliving rock, to strip away the excess parts and find what focuses in on the now. And I did it. I figured it out somehow. I think you two can both figure it out too.”

The two Grottans blinked four dark eyes in identical soft, pensive expressions.

“I’m happy to try,” said Deet.

Amri shrugged. “The last time I dreamfasted with a rock, I almost got my soul sucked out of my body, but sure, why not?”

 _Oh Thra that's right_. “The vein should be clear here,” she said. “But no matter what, I won't let you get hurt again.”

“I know,” he replied. “Just tell me what to do.”

Naia stood between Amri and Deet and placed a single hand on the rock, and stretched the other behind her. To her left, Amri placed a hand on the rock and reached back to join Naia’s free hand; Deet did the same on her right. 

“I recognize,” said Naia, as they stood contorted with their three hands joined behind them, “that we look silly again, and that this time it was my idea.”

“I still think we look kind of cool,” said Deet.

“I agree with Deet,” said Amri. Naia briefly noted that twenty-odd years living in a cave made people super weird, and then went into the dream-healing trance, while entering a dreamfast with Amri and Deet at the same time.

 _Is this it?_ asked Deet as their joint minds stripped away layer after layer of rock.

 _No, that’s not it_ , said Amri. _We’re looking for crystal. That’s mostly calcite._

_Well there’s clearly a significant amount of quartz and…_

_That’s feldspar, Deet._

_Oh, you’re right._

Naia had to admit that maybe spending all of those years in a cave might have some advantages. Very specific, mineral-identifying advantages.

 _It will look like an uninterrupted vein of crystal_ , she said to them. _You can’t miss it._

With their help, she was able to dig deeper into the rock than before. As they delved further into the earth, the rock grew harder, and darker, more gray and less brown. They passed an underground river and there, right below it, lay the vein. 

_There_ , she said. _All right, I’ll anchor my mind to the vein. You two break the trance and we’ll begin walking into the mist. I’ll keep my hand on the rock and start following the line. You two follow my lead, and shake me out of the trance if I'm about to walk into something._

Slowly, they inched forward into the mists, the grass and trees becoming scant as they entered the rocky hills. Naia kept one hand on the rock at all times, while Amri held the other one fast, and Deet held onto his. The ley line followed the flow of the underground river, and, with the double-marker, was fairly easy to trail. 

“Naia.” Amri’s voice pulled her out of the trance. She focused her eyes, to find herself standing with Amri and Deet in a sea of mist, not a landmark to be seen. 

“Why did you break me out…”

“Shh,” said Amri, his ears tilted forward. “Listen.”

At first, Naia heard nothing but silence. The damp, moonlit mist drifted cooly against the skin of her face, curled into her gills, lulling her into a deceptive peace. And then, low but steady, the sound of chanting. 

“Can you two tell where it’s coming from?” she asked.

Amri nodded and gripped her hand more tightly. Deet led the way, followed by Amri and then Naia. The chanting grew louder, echoing through the misty hills. The trail began winding downhill. 

The two Sisters were still high in the sky, as if no time had passed, when the three Gelfling, hand in hand, walked out of the mists and into the Valley of the Standing Stones.

******

Only the Rose Sun remained above the horizon as Rian hobbled out of the infirmary, his makeshift splint replaced with one that was much more structurally-sound, and stepped into the evening bustle of Ha’rar.

After everything that had happened, it was difficult to believe that life in Ha'rar was going on as normal, while a day’s travel to the south, Stone-in-the-Wood sat abandoned. He watched the Vapra go about their usual business. Merchants closed up shops for the day, while tavernkeepers lit their lamps, music drifting out from the doors to entice passersby looking for an evening meal. He tried very hard not to resent them.

 _I just need to pass through town as quickly as possible and make it back to the Citadel_ , he thought. Somehow a stark, heavily-guarded palace where everyone was still on-edge about the recent bout of murder and betrayal that had happened there felt like a more comforting place to be right now than this busy city street, with its buzz of chatter and warm lamplight. He leaned into his crutch and was about to pick up his pace past yet another bustling inn, when a voice came from the doorway.

“Rian?"

He turned. There in the doorway stood a man about his age, a little taller, with the obvious coloring and attire of a Stonewood. 

“Talyn?” he asked.

“Come in and have a drink with us then,” Talyn said, nodding towards the inn. His eyes drifted down to Rian’s splint. “What happened to your leg, brother?”

A few minutes later, Rian found himself sitting with a mug of ale at a table in the window of the inn with a childhood friend he hadn’t seen in five trine or so. The Rose Sun had dropped behind the hills, and through the window there was nothing but a frosty blue twilight, and the occasional flicker of the same warm lamplight he had just been resenting. Rian found himself in the position of trying to have a normal conversation with an old acquaintance in a bustling inn. Like everything else in Ha’rar, it felt off somehow.

“I can't believe you're here," said Rian. "I can’t believe _I'm_ here, that we're here together. It doesn't feel real.” 

“It is strange how everyone in this town acts like everything's normal,” Talyn said. “When I first got here there were some whispers about the All-Maudra losing her mind a bit, but ever since she’s come back from Stone-in-the-Wood, she's been acting mostly normal, and the Princess is unharmed, so the chatter kind of died down. You had some hand in that, didn't you? Saving the Princess?” 

_Actually it was mostly the giant rock-creature she found in a secret chamber beneath her mother’s throne. But that is not part of a normal conversation_. “A small hand,” said Rian. “But what about you? What have you been doing? How did you get here?"

“I moved to my wife's village over a trine ago,” began Talyn. “Her parents have a farm there.” _Oh Thra, he's the same age as me and he's had a wife for over a trine. Gurjin was right, I really_ was _a child_. 

“A Stone-in-the-Wood boy like you, on a farm?" asked Rian. _Try to keep it light._

Talyn sipped his drink, a half smile on his lips. “What can I say? I fell in love. And I like farming well enough. Liked farming. If we ever get to go back. Anyway, our village is on the northern edge of the Forest, so when the order came to evacuate it wasn't too hard for us to pack up everyone and take the river up to Ha’rar.”

Rian sipped his drink. This was going well. This was normal conversation, with a normal person, in a normal inn, bustling with activity, as if society weren’t collapsing all around them. Maybe for a little while he could forget everything that happened and feel like things were, indeed, normal. “So your wife’s family is here with you in Ha'rar?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Talyn. The green markings on his face reflected grayly in the low light. “Well, everyone except my wife’s brother. He’s a soldier. Was a soldier. He went off with Maudra Fara and didn't come back.”

 _And there goes the normal conversation._ “I’m so sorry,” said Rian. 

“Inri and I should have gone with him. Her parents needed us on the farm, but maybe if we had all been there together, looking out for each other… I just can’t believe I’m alive when so many others are dead.”

“I certainly understand that,” said Rian, thinking of the castle guard.

“Yeah. Our whole little squad growing up and only you and me left.”

“Wait, what?” _What?_

"Ah, you don't know. You know, all of us from the Hollow.”

Rian mentally ran through the row of houses that had been nestled in their corner of town, and the Gelfling his age who had occupied them. “Gia and Loni were castle guards,” he said. “So I guess I knew they didn't make it, but I honestly haven’t stopped to think about it. Everyone?"

“I think so. We’re all prime soldiering age, so it was bound to happen as soon as the fighting started. Gia and Loni gone, and Nala, Ulon, Erdi, too. Those three were Stonewood soldiers. Some of their families are all right. Ulon’s sister was a solider but she’s pregnant so she was off-duty. Down in Great Smerth now as far as I’ve heard. Rena’s dead too, Gia's sister. I don’t know. There's a lot to list.”

“Oh Thra, Talyn, I didn't even think about it. I knew there were a lot of casualties, but after the final battle I barely had time to check in with my mother let alone…" _Who am I kidding? I didn't even try._

“Ah, yeah, but you were busy though. I heard you went to heal the Crystal." 

“But we failed.” 

“I heard that too. But you tried, right?” 

“Yeah, we replaced the shard, but the Crystal rejected it.” 

“Sounds like you did everything you could do.” 

“Yeah.” Rian turned his gaze to the window, but all he saw was his own face in the reflected light.

Talyn took a sip of his drink, keeping his eyes on Rian. “So is there any hope now?” 

_Oh, Thra, I don’t know._ “There’s this whole plan involving visions and ancient songs and things. But there’s not much room for action. My friends who are dream-arts types and scholars are doing most of it. I'm just standing around. And not even that,” he said, gesturing to his leg. 

“Hang in there Rian,” said Talyn. “The Stonewood need you. It means a lot to us that there's one of us running around with princesses and maudras and everything. Makes it feel like we’re still in the fight.”

“Of course we're still in the fight,” said Rian, setting down his mug on the table a little harder than he meant to. “The Stonewood are fine."

“Yeah, maybe," said Talyn. “More people went down to Great Smerth than came up to Ha'rar, so maybe if we went down there... I don't know, up here in Ha’rar... the Vapra mean well. They've tried to be welcoming. But sometimes it feels like whenever they're looking at a Stonewood, it's like they’re looking at a ghost. Like just laying eyes on one of us is a bad omen."

One drink later, Rian found himself back where he had started, hobbling across town back to the Citadel, only now under the blue-black sky of the tail end of twilight. He felt even more unsettled than he had before. Things were not normal, and, he realized, even if they managed to deal with the Skeksis, things would never be normal again, not with so many lives lost.

He understood at last why Gurjin hadn’t wanted to talk about getting drained. Some things were just too big to process while trying to continue to go on with daily life. So Rian decided to pretend that even though he happened to be in Ha’rar, right now, at the exact same moment, the Stonewood were still back in the Endless Forest, living life as usual, and all of his childhood friends were still alive and well and growing into men and women. Wrapped in this useful delusion, he limped back to the Citadel as dusk turned fully into night.

******

The day passed into full dusk as the Rose Sun fell below the horizon. Seladon marveled that a month had gone by since news had first come of traitors at the castle, since the life she had always known had begun to unravel. It seemed simultaneously like only yesterday and a thousand trine ago.

She was so lost in thought that she sat up, startled, as the door to her rooms opened with a squeak. 

“Brea,” she said as her sister walked over to her desk and pulled up a chair. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your friends?”

“It’s time for our evening meeting,” Brea responded, taking out her notebook.

Seladon honestly had not expected her sister to remember. Brea had been so excited to see Rian and the others, and of course there was the excitement of the morning’s dreamfast and the new plans to be made for the next part of their quest. Well, all the better if she wasn’t hurriedly making plans to go off with her friends to the Valley of the Standing Stones, since Seladon couldn’t let her go with them. There was too much to do in Ha’rar. 

“Right,” Seladon said. “There are only a few things today. First of all, I’m going to need to contact Ethri about this skekSa situation.”

“I’ll find out when the next boat is leaving for Cera-Na,” Brea said, writing herself a reminder.

“Good. We also promised we’d send a shipment of flax for fishing nets. With the shortage of crops, we need to help the Sifa as much as possible with ensuring larger catches.”

“I’ll double-check with the Weaver’s Guild. They said yesterday that they had secured the requested amount, but were still waiting for the crates to arrive at the warehouse by the docks.” 

_Tavra was right. She really is trying._ It seemed, despite Mother’s years of coddling, Brea had finally grown up and accepted her duty. Except for that one thing. “Good,” said Seladon. “Also, quick question, but have you always liked boys?”

Brea looked up from her notebook. “Is that how we’re going to transition into this conversation?”

“It goes without saying that you would choose to be with someone who is sociopolitically inappropriate, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s a man or a woman, so I was just wondering. It’s a relatively rare preference in our family.”

“I didn’t choose to be with him because it’s sociopolitically inappropriate.”

“I know. But you would never set aside your feelings for the sake of propriety either.” _I’m escalating_ , thought Seladon. _Why am I escalating?_

“Tavra didn’t set aside _her_ feelings for the sake of propriety and you’re not mad at her.”

“Well, it was a little too late to be angry with her by the time I found out.” Seladon heard her voice rising. “And at least she had enough sense of duty to be sneaky about it.” 

Seladon waited for Brea's outburst in response. That was the natural conclusion to their usual dynamic, and they were falling right back into their usual dynamic. So she was surprised when Brea put her notes down on the table, put her head in her hands, and asked in a quiet voice, “Is this going to be a problem?” 

Seladon knew her sister to be stubborn, insistent, and quick in thought, but she had rarely seen the quiet inward-looking expression that crossed her face now. _This is what I do _not_ do well_, Seladon realized. She was comfortable with coordinating details and organizing meetings. Mother had been right about those things. But understanding the concept of “duty” was another thing entirely, and maybe that’s one of those places where Mother had been wrong.

Seladon recalled her conversation with Naia back in Stone-in-the-Wood. _We don’t have authority because we’re better than our people, but because someone needs to make sure that everyone is fed, clothed, sheltered, protected._ She also remembered how, moments later, Naia had scolded her brother for wandering off into the Forest and making her worry, but Seladon couldn’t for the life of her imagine her scolding him for falling in love with someone.

“If it’s going to be a problem, then you need to tell me,” said Brea after Seladon’s continued silence. “Then… then I’ll need to figure out what to do next.”

 _Brea managed to pull herself out of our usual dynamic_ , thought Seladon. _You need to do the same thing. You need to look past your knee-jerk irritation at her for once and figure out what you are actually upset about._

And in that moment, several pieces finally fell into place. It was never about duty. Brea hadn't let news of her relationship slip, it had been Onica, so why was Seladon blaming Brea for a lack of discretion? _I’m just angry with her because she chose to be happy_ , she thought, _and I cannot make that choice for myself. And maybe I need to figure out why I can’t._

“No,” Seladon said softly. “It’s not a problem. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

_And I have to let her go._

“You should meet with the others later,” she said to her sister, “and plan what you’ll need to meet up with Naia’s group.”

“Wait, you’re letting me go?” Brea’s voice switched from subdued to a tentative excitement. “I just assumed that you wouldn’t.”

“In this case, I think it’s a perfectly good idea to have as many scholars as possible on the team. And presuming we can actually find the Valley of the Standing Stones, it’s probably the safest place you can be on Thra right now.”

“But what about all the meetings and, like, crop stores and everything?”

“I can handle the meetings and crop stores and everything.”

For the first time in recent memory, Brea threw her arms around Seladon’s neck in a gesture of pure happiness. _See?_ Seladon said to herself, slowly putting her arms around her sister. _All I had to do was be nice to her. It’s so simple._

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure out which parts of my training with Mother were valuable, and which were absolute nonsense.”

“Mother was too hard on you,” Brea said from their embrace. “That was absolute nonsense.”

Seladon all of a sudden found herself trying to hold back tears. She managed to allow herself only a few sniffles before walking over to the window and asking, in as controlled a voice as she could manage, “What do you think of the concept of duty?”

“I’m still working on this one myself,” said Brea, successfully distracted by a philosophical question. She joined Seladon by the window. ”But I think the key is to ask yourself the reason.”

“What?"

“ _Why is this my duty?_ If the reason is because it will help our people in a tangible way, then all right. It’s my duty. If the best reason I can come up with is _because that's the way it’s always been done_ or something like that, then it’s probably… not nonsense necessarily, but something that should be questioned.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Seladon said, gazing at their joint reflections in the window. “Why don’t I ask you for your ideas more often?"

“Should I summarize our entire nineteen-trine relationship for you?”

Seladon laughed softly. “Well, I'm going to start doing it more.” 

“Just to double-check,” Brea began, “this doesn't mean you’re going to agree with me all of the time, right?”

“Not a chance. But I am going to listen to what you have to say.” For a moment they stood together in silence, watching the glow of the white moonlight behind the mountains.

“We’re going to be careful,” said Brea after a pause. “Maybe not _sneaky_ per se. But I know there are people who won't understand, and I don't want him to get hurt.”

“It’s fine,” said Seladon to her sister's reflection in the window. “I trust you. And I don’t want you to have the regrets that Tavra had.” She turned away from the window and walked back to her desk. “Now let's finish up this work before it gets too late. What did the Grains Guild say about the last shipment to the Dousan?”

They finished up their official business just as the First Sister was peeking above the hills. Seladon sent Brea off to dinner with her friends, herself preferring a simple evening meal alone in her rooms.

After dinner, Seladon went back to the window and looked down over Ha’rar and then up at the sky where the Second Sister now joined the first. She stood in the moonlight, and eyes open but unfocused, held her hands out before her. 

_It’s like going into a dreamfast with the light itself_ , she remembered Ma saying, although back then Seladon was still so young that she still had trouble controlling her dreamfasts. Her adult self had tried a few times, and managed an occasional flicker before the heaviness of the world broke through and crushed her concentration. But tonight she was feeling lighter than she had in a long time, so she tried again. 

At first, nothing, but then, little tiny specks flickered across her vision, like shooting stars within her eyes. The specks grew more and more numerous until they filled her entire field of vision. And then, suddenly, she was through, her eyes gently taking in the moonlit throne room. She looked down at her hands, then her legs and feet.

She smiled, a real smile, just for herself. Even if someone else had been in the room, they wouldn’t have been able to see it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was having trouble coming up with more Gelfling names, so I named Rian's friend after the spaceship in _Farscape_. Also, I wrote this story during quarantine and upon re-reading this chapter I see that I basically wrote in the Thra equivalent of a Zoom meeting, so there's a little reality intruding upon art.


	10. (3.2) Lost in the Memories of a Thousand Gelfling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to be upfront and say right now that this is the longest chapter. But it wasn't quite long enough to break into two, plus I couldn't bear to anyway. So here we are.

Part 3.2 Lost in the Memories of a Thousand Gelfling  
_Eavesdropping. Songs of the past. An exchange in the desert. Two feet on solid ground. Visibility. An urRu, unsettled. Gelfling wizardry. Eavesdropping, again._  
POVs: skekSa, Amri, Seethi, Rian, Kylan, urSu, Brea, Seladon

******

Three midday suns shone down upon a hill in the sea off the coast near Cera-Na, and upon a lone Skeksis standing atop it, long green blades of windswept grass grazing against the grayed skin of her legs. A constant breeze from the sea gently brushed the heat of the three suns away from her face.

She shut her eyes against the light on the sea, and thought of the light of home, where there was no sea and no land. Home where there were no traitorous Gelfling to refuse her generous benevolence. Home where she didn’t have to obsequiously pander to tiny ephemeral creatures who turned to dust every seven dozen trine just to feel like she had a purpose. Home, free of Gelfling.

But she wasn’t home. And she was never going home, not if it meant reuniting with that bore urSan and bowing in contrition before the other urSkeks. So she needed the Sifa, if not for companionship then at least to help her sail to new lands, which was the only thing that staved off her despair. So it was best to help her fellows with their pathetic quest to destroy the Gelfling, or to drink their essence, whatever that was about, so she could take her small band of mortal companions and move on. 

On the glittering sea below, a brown boat rocked gently towards her island. She had returned to Cera-Na only briefly, ostensibly to gather supplies, but actually to make her presence known. The news had already spread from the docks of Ha’rar that she had escorted two young Gelfling heroes and their Podling companion safely from the grasp of the castle Skeksis, and although the Sifa remained steadfast in their support of the Gelfling resistance, she could tell that plenty still considered her an exception among the Skeksis. She let it be known where she was heading, sailed out to this small island off the coast, and waited. 

“Lord Mariner,” said the captain of the boat once it had docked. “We are heartened by your return to our shores in these troubling times. We are but humble fisherfolk, and we seek your wisdom and knowledge as we search for new fishing grounds. There are many new refugees in Ha’rar, and with the failure of so many crops and the abandonment of so much southern farmland, we are in need of new sources of nourishment for the Gelfling.”

Sweet, ephemeral things. In this one utterance from her first visitors, she had confirmation that displaced Gelfling from Domrak and the Forest had come north, and that the Spriton had begun evacuating the Plains, and that the Gelfling were becoming more desperate for food.

As the days passed, more boats came freely to and from her island in a constant flurry of activity, as the Sifa asked the Lord Mariner to share her wisdom and knowledge of the seas, to bless their fishing nets, even to hear her tales of trine past, from long before any of them had been born. Her little island had become so busy that it was easy for her to pass casually among the Gelfing as they dangled their feet in the water and picnicked on the shores. She heard, from their perspective, the story of the failed healing of the Crystal. She learned that a pair of Gelfling had already discovered a Garthim in the Tomb of Relics. And, two days after she arrived at her island, she heard something very interesting indeed.

“That’s just a rumor, if you ask me,” said an elderly fisherman to an equally-elderly fisherwoman of his acquaintance. “Valley of the Standing Stones? The place doesn’t even exist.”

“It exists all right. My cousin’s wife had a shipwreck along the western coast once. Nasty business. She was the only one of the crew that survived, washed up on the shore bleeding half to death. Passed out from her injuries in the low waves. When she woke up, she was in a strange valley and her wounds were healed, with no scars, as if she’d never even had them. There were homes carved out of the living rock, but not a living soul to be seen. She found some food that had been left for her, and a map to Sami Thicket, and went on her way. Ran into a Spriton homestead a league or so out, and found out it was the very same day of the shipwreck.”

“Bah. That has all the makings of a tall tale.”

“It might be embellished a bit, but that doesn’t mean the Valley’s not a real place. The Stonewood and the Spriton all have stories of it.”

“And what business would Elder Cadia’s apprentice have at the Valley of the Standing Stones?”

 _Yes_ , thought SkekSa, _What business would Elder Cadia’s apprentice have at the Valley of the Standing Stones?_

The Mariner moved among the Sifa, listening to their problems with one ear and their gossip with another, and before the last sun set, she knew exactly who was going to the Valley, and when, and how, and why.

******

Amri awoke, as he had most days of his life, with cool stone beneath his head. Unlike home, however, here the morning sunlight streamed down upon his face, so that upon opening his eyes he immediately blinked and shut them again. He pulled his hood over his head and scooched back further against the wall, well in the shadows, before opening them up again.

“Ah, little one, you’re awake.” By a fire in the middle of his living quarters, hewn out of the living rock, stood urLii, preparing some concoction in a cauldron. To Amri’s left, Naia and Deet still slept. urLii reached out a third hand, and a fourth, scooping some of the contents of the cauldron into a bowl and offering it to Amri.

Amri took the bowl and sat on a square of carpet near the fire. “What’s in this?”

“Soup.”

Amri sniffed it, and took a taste. “There’s cranding powder in it.”

“Good for…”

“…for the overheated mind. Like after a day or two of wandering through the wasteland.”

“Very good, little one. You remember our lessons well.”

“You know,” Amri said, sipping from the bowl, “I’m much bigger now than when we first met. One might even call me an adult.”

“You are still little compared to me.”

“No arguing with that, I guess,” said Amri.

“But you have changed much. Even since I last saw you a few weeks ago.”

“I was hoping you’d be at the Tomb,” said Amri, putting down his empty bowl and pulling down his hood to further shield his eyes from the sunlight. “After everything that happened, I really needed someone to tell me that everything would be all right.”

“I would never tell you that everything would be all right,” said urLii, picking up the empty bowl with a spare hand and replacing it with a cup of tea. “What I would tell you is that you have the strength to meet whatever may come.”

Amri picked at the fringe of the carpet. It had been woven from some kind of plant that he was unfamiliar with, like so many things on the surface world. “A lot of bad things are happening,” he said. “To the Grottan, to the Gelfling, to the Arathim, to Thra. I don’t like it.”

“You’re lucky to have your friends with you in these troubling times,” urLii replied. “They seem to require more sleep than you, however.”

“They did a lot of flying yesterday,” said Amri, braiding the tassel and then unbraiding it again. “And I can’t talk to them about all the bad things that are happening anyway.”

“Who is it that you can talk to about your fears and sadness, if not your friends? Don’t they lean on you, when they’re upset?”

Amri thought about the cavern, when he had almost been absorbed into the Darkening crystal vein, how Naia hadn’t held back her tears of fear for him and sorrow for her brother. Again, with the landstrider, how she had let herself get angry and sad and when he had offered her a shoulder she had taken it without hesitation. He remembered Deet’s tears as she wrapped her arms around him, the first person she had held after days and days of thinking she’d never hold anyone again. 

“They’ve both been through a lot. They don’t need to listen to my little complaints.”

“My poor little one. That is not the message of their trust in you. It must go two ways, or you are no true friend.”

“It’s not so easy for me.”

“Easier to get lost in ancient abandoned tunnels for days at a time, until you stumble upon an old urRu to torment?”

“It’s easy to talk to you. You’re immortal. My little problems could never bother you.”

“Is that why you kept coming to the Tomb all those years?”

“Well, part of the reason. There was also a lot of really cool stuff in there.”

UrLii shook his head slowly, which Amri long ago had learned was his equivalent of a laugh. 

Amri smiled, twisting the braided carpet fringe around his finger. “You won’t let them drain me, will you?” 

“We don’t let them do anything, little one. We are limited in our ability to stop them, or to save you. But I will do what I can. For example,” he said, reaching for his walking stick, “I can show you what you came for.”

“An unblemished crystal vein?”

UrLii continued walking silently down the ramp to the valley floor below. Amri took a quick look at Naia and Deet, still fast asleep, and followed him. 

The urRu were already awake, each absorbed in their own activities. None payed any attention as urLii led Amri past their rock-homes to a narrow crevice at the edge of the Valley, not yet lit by the morning suns. 

“The ledge down to the right leads to a cavern where you will find what you need.” UrLii leaned heavily on his staff with two of his hands, and considered Amri for a moment. 

“You have indeed become much bigger,” he said in a voice that Amri thought might be tinged with pride, and also sadness. A third hand emerged from urLii’s robes and touched Amri softly on the head. With that, urLii turned around and headed back toward his home. 

Amri took off his cloak and scrambled up onto the ledge and into the cave. The ceiling was just tall enough for him to stand, and the closeness and darkness reminded him of home. The light radiating in from the entrance dimmed as he walked further and further into the cave, until he reached a sudden drop of unknown depth. There, hanging down over the dark pit below, dangled a stalactite of crystal just taller than him.

 _This is it_ , he thought. He knelt before the edge and placed one hand on the crystal, then the other, finally pressing an ear to a cool facet. As before, he heard a low hum. He emptied his mind of everything except the humming, focusing on the minor fluctuations in pitch and intensity. His mind once again drifted away into the hum of voices in his memories, the voices of his long-dead mother and father, the voice of urLii upon discovering a Gelfling boy sifting through a shelf of treasures in the Tomb of Relics, the voice of the Ascendancy echoing through Domrak village.

Then came the vision of the tiny triangles, the six-sided shapes, made of little lines of quivering light and, with each quiver, came a note. The song of the unDarkened crystal sounded in his mind, pulse after pulse, quiver after quiver. And with the song came a new rush of images. Of Mother Aughra, but different, young and as splendid as the forest in midsummer. Of Gelfling, unlike any Gelfling he had known, in clothing primitive and strange, with no sign of clan or rank, tilling the fields, fishing on the river, working the gifts of nature into craftwork. The bright light of three suns fell upon their brown bodies as they worked and played and lived and died.

When Amri broke the trance, he was alone in the cave. He slumped back against the wall and closed his eyes. The images he had just seen rattled around in his mind, a confusing mess. The song of the Crystal of Truth, when the Crystal was young. Gelfling of another age, free to be who they were meant to be. It rushed together with his memories of being partially-drained in the cavern at Grot, and, before that, memories of his home, riddled with monsters, his mind no longer his, memories of Darkened beasts wreaking havoc, his hijacked mind feeling the agony of the maimed and murdered, Arathim and Gelfling alike. And finally, after weeks, he let himself cry, a quiet but constant flow of tears.

He knew Naia was there even before her hands, fumbling through the darkness, reached out and found him. “UrLii told me that you needed help. Are you okay?” she asked, her grip firm on his upper arm.

 _She can't see me, right? It has to be too dark for her here._ “Oh, yeah," he said, trying to make his voice sound normal. “Pretty good. Just sitting here alone in the dark and—”

A flailing hand found his face, poking him in the eye. He gave a small yelp of pain. “You're crying,” she said.

“I am now,” he said, clutching his eye. But now that her hands had found his face in the dark, she traced it more gently, and found the trails his tears had left. She wiped them away.

“Did you find the song?” she asked.

“Yeah. And some other stuff.”

“Do you want to show me?”

He felt for her hand on his face and took it. He took a deep breath and straightened his hand so that their palms were touching. Together, they went through the jumble of images he had just seen and heard, the lines of light, the quivering song, and memories, both his own and those of a thousand Gelfling long dead. When it was over, she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly, and he let her.

******

As morning crossed into high midday, three suns at their zeniths, the desert grew too hot for Gelfling. The Dousan fled the heat, sheltering in their sandships or deep inside the caves that littered the Claw Mountains. Seethi sat alone in one such cave, her back to the entrance, meditating in preparation for the evening’s rituals. In her trance, halfway in dreamspace and halfway in waking life, she sensed the presence at the mouth of cave before she heard him.

“Hello, Starchild,” she said, turning to face him. He wore a heavy cloak, but even from what little of him she could see, she could tell that he had been much changed from the days of old. 

“I never loved that name,” Raunip said. “But the question is how you know it. You don’t look as if you’ve been alive for two thousand trine.”

“It is the way of the Dousan to delve into memories beyond those of the living,” she said. “The older the memory is, the more difficult it is to find in dreamspace, but I have delved back as far as the early Age of Harmony, and once, even, the Age of Innocence. I recognize you from the memories of the Gelfling of long trine past.”

“I am interested in memories slightly more recent than those,” Raunip said. “Less than a thousand trine ago.”

“Ah. The memories belonging to the songteller Gyr have been quite active recently. Perhaps that is what you refer to?”

She saw a smile beneath his heavy hood. “That is excellent news,” he said. “That was part of the plan, for the Gelfling to discover the song of the urSkeks’ crystal in the memories of Gyr. I heard tell of the young woman in Ha’rar who found the symbol of unity, but was yet unsure if she and her friends had discovered the spiral. And they came to you for help to find Gyr?"

“No. I have heard of the discovery of the symbol of unity but nothing more. I was wondering why Gyr's memories were so close to the surface of dreamspace this past week or so.”

“Ah,” said Raunip. “Everything is different than I expected ever since they found that shortcut in Stone-in-the-Wood. The dream-stitcher and the soothsayer together must have been able to handle the journey through Gyr’s memories.”

“We Gelfling are all children of Thra, regardless of clan and tradition, and we are all connected to the Crystal, and to dreamspace.”

“Just goes to show that plans only get you so far,” said a voice from just outside the cave. Seethi froze.

“Who is that?” she asked. But the timber of voice was unmistakable.

“A Skeksis,” Seethi said, backing against the wall. “How could you? How could you bring a Skeksis here?”

The beaked face peered into the cave. “You know, I get this a lot. Well, twice. This is the second time I’ve met anyone in several hundred trine. So you may say I get this all the time. But I’m a nice Skeksis.”

Seethi began to panic. All of the memories that she had ever seen of Raunip suggested that he was as kind to the Gelfling as Aughra herself. But if he had brought a Skeksis to a lone Gelfling, to a maudra, unprotected in the wilderness, then maybe he was not to be trusted.

“Dear child of Thra,” said Raunip. “You say you have seen me in the memories of those long past. If you know anything about me, then you must know that I have never trusted the Skeksis. You must know that I never trusted the urSkeks before them. But I trust this one.”

“He’s… right… you know,” came a deep voice from outside the cave. Slowly, a lumbering figure came into view and entered the cave.

“You’re an urRu.”

“Have you… seen me in the… memories of Thra?”

“The urRu show up so rarely in the memories of the dead. But I have seen one of your kind in waking life, urSan. She regularly appears on a small island off the coast to the west of the desert.”

“UrGoh and skekGra have lived here in the desert for hundreds of trine,” said Raunip. “In peace. And they are ready to become one again.”

“An urSkek? I have never seen the memory of an urSkek in dreamspace.”

“You have access to but few ancient memories, is that not what you said? The urSkeks have not existed for almost a thousand trine.”

“That’s true. But what do you want from me now?”

“I know where to find the memory of an urSkek. This urSkek, in fact. We need access to Gyr’s memories.”

“We? Such things are not possible for the urRu or the Skeksis.”

“I’ve managed to connect them to dreamspace before. I granted them a vision once long ago. It’s not easy though. That is why we need one practiced in connecting to the memories of the dead. The Dousan choose their maudra based on the skill of their dream-arts, do they not? So you are the most skilled.”

“They are not of Thra.”

“Nor is all of me.”

Seethi remained skeptical. She knew what the Skeksis had done at the castle, what they would continue to do if they could get their hands on the Gelfling. 

“The Skeksis and the urSkeks before them have disrupted the balance of this planet for almost two thousand trine,” she said. “They edged their way into the story of our world and took it as their own. Now we do not even remember ourselves as we were. And we will never know who we were supposed to be.”

“She’s right,” said the Skeksis from the entrance to the cave. “Maybe we should just forget about this. Maybe we don’t deserve…”

“Honored Maudra,” said Raunip, interrupting his companion. “I lived for countless trine before the urSkeks arrived on Thra. I can give you that in exchange for your help. Those memories, of the Age of Innocence. I will help you mark them so you can find them again, explore them. And the Dousan can guide the rest of the Gelfling through their lost past for trine to come.”

“If we still have trine to come.”

“I have hope, Maudra. And more than that, we have a plan that we’ve been working on for a very long time. The Gelfling, joined together, undoing those two thousand trine of division, can reach the potential denied to them and unlock a new future, their own future. We can make the Gelfling whole, Maudra. And make the urSkeks whole, and send them away.”

Seethi stood, one Gelfling woman with three creatures of the stars. She had just once in her life managed to latch on to a memory from a Gelfling who had lived during the Age of Innocence, a glimpse of the light of the Great Sun reflected in a river, alongside a face. The Starchild's offer was too much to pass up. And if it would help send the Skeksis home, then all the better.

She reached up behind her and plucked a glowing orange granon seed from the wall. She split it in half and used the pulp inside to draw a circle on the floor of the cave, and a triangle within. Vapors rose up from the floor of the cave where the pulp burned into the rock.

“The Starchild stands at the vertex of the triangle pointing towards the entrance of the cave. The other two stand at the remaining two vertices. The three of you must enter dreamspace, if you can, on your own. I will enter the ghost-trance and meet you there, and guide you on your journey.”

Seethi began chanting, slowly at first, then quickening her pace until the trance was upon her. The sea of the memories of the dead floated through dreamspace. She waited patiently for one of Gyr’s to float to the surface, and latched on to the strongest one, an image of the Second Sister over the Silver Sea. Casting her mind around for her companions, she found the eyes of the Starchild, bright and inquisitive lights in the sky, and two smaller lights circling around them. 

_We are ready_ , she heard him say in her mind.

With that, Seethi followed Gyr’s memories across the Silver Sea to the horizon, expertly moving in flashes, skipping from day to day until they had reached their goal in no time. There, floating in the sky, a light like a sun or a moon, but not either. An urSkek.

The light of the Starchild’s eyes and the two smaller lights orbiting them moved from the sea to the sky and seemed to merge completely with the light of the urSkek. Then, finally, the twin lights of the Starchild’s eyes floated back down to the sea.

 _It is done_ , he said. For an instant, his eyes flashed violet, and a bolt of purple lightning crashed into the waves below. 

_Is that supposed to happen?_ she asked. But he did not reply. 

In the next moment, the eyes blinked back to their usual hue, and the Second Sister was gone, and the Silver Sea was gone, and Seethi stood in a neverending forest, staring up into the face of Aughra, but different, less-lined with age and worry. The Starchild was true to his word, carrying her trine after trine through the Age of Innocence, until she was lost in the memories of a thousand Gelfling, living alongside the creatures and plants of Thra, one sort of creature among many, knowing exactly how it fit into the great song of their world.

When Seethi came out of the trance, the Starchild and his friends were gone, the rising wind already beginning to erase their three very different sets of tracks in the sand. Raunip had left a single piece of paper on the floor, a note, that said simply _Go to Ha’rar at once. The All-Maudra will have need of you there._

******

The Rose Sun had just cleared the mountaintops to the east and its light joined with the Great Sun and the Dying to scatter in a thousand warm-hued flashes across the sea. Rian would have considered it beautiful if he were able to keep his eyes open for more than ten seconds without feeling like he was going to vomit.

“So you just need to have a firm grip, right?” Gurjin, unlike Rian, had taken to sailing immediately and was fiddling with the ropes and sails and other boat things. From his perch on a bench lined up against the cabin wall, Rian opened his eyes for another ten second window, and watched as Gurjin wrapped his hands around the heavy ropes attached to the mainsail, pulled once, and tied them firmly in place.

“Not bad,” said the Sifan woman pulling on another set of ropes. “Onica said she needed another sailor to help sail the ship, but maybe I didn’t need to come. You’re a natural at this.”

“A natural at what, Tae? Pulling on things?” said Gurjin with a look on his face that Rian instantly recognized. _Good luck, brother_ , he thought as his ten seconds ended and he closed his eyes again. 

“You’re funny,” she replied with a laugh. “You just think it’s easy because you have a knack for it.”

“Is Gurjin flirting with Onica’s friend?” Brea asked, disrupting Rian’s rest.

“Does she have a pulse?” Rian replied, not bothering to open his eyes. Hup chuckled beside him. 

Rian and Hup, apparently, were the most prone to seasickness of their little group, despite the fact that only the two Sifa among them had ever been at sea before. They sat slumped together on the bench, attempting to bear the choppy, ceaseless rocking of the ship. Now as all three suns rose higher in the sky, the heat added to their misery. Rian’s leg itched incessantly in its splint.

“I hate this boat,” he said.

“Actually, it’s a ship,” said Brea, sitting on Rian’s other side. “I was reading up before we left, and the difference between the two…”

Rian let her drone on without protest. It was oddly comforting, as his mind zoomed out from the meaning of her words and focused on their intonation. He forgot his seasickness for a moment as he drifted off into a half-sleep, half-awake state, the rise and fall of Brea’s voice in his ears.

“My mother’s in Great Smerth,” he said suddenly, interrupting Brea’s monologue.

“Oh,” she said, unfazed. “I guess I didn’t know you had a mother.”

“And a brother and sister too. Both younger than me. I saw them briefly before we left for the castle. I wonder if I’ll get to see them again.” He felt Hup pat him sympathetically on the arm. 

“Thanks, friend,” he said.

“Don’t say _if_ , Rian, it’s too depressing, say _when_ ,” Brea added helpfully. 

“What about you, Brea?”

“Me? I have two sisters and one of them is a spider now.”

He nudged her with his elbow. “I mean you never talk about your father.”

“Oh, I don’t have one,” she said. “I mean, I had another mother, but she died a few months before I was born.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I obviously don’t know what I’m missing,” she said. “Although maybe our family would have been a little more functional if she had lived.”

Rian opened his eyes and looked down at the weary Podling beside him. “Are your parents still alive, Hup?"

"Yep. Old.” This was followed by a string in Podling.

Kylan laughed and looked up from where he was leaning on the rail tuning his lute. "He says he’s number eight out of eleven brothers and sisters. He’s not sure his parents even know that he left home.”

Rian chuckled. “How about your…” _Oh wait, I know what happened to his parents_. “Oh, sorry. Nevermind.”

“It’s all right," Kylan said. "My father was a Stonewood, actually.”

“Oh. Was he from Stone-in-the-Wood?”

"I don’t know. I don’t even know what his name was. My mother always called him darling and things like that, which is very sweet but not very informative. And Maudra Mera would never talk about him. She tends to ignore things that she finds inconvenient, like people falling in love across clan lines.”

“That's stupid,” said Tae, leaning back on the rail to which she had just tied the sails. “We Sifa fall in love across clan lines all the time. Love, casual flings, whatever. It’s the best.”

“She's right, you know,” said Gurjin. “Casual flings are the best.”

“Tae, Gurjin, could you two stop flirting for a minute and make sure we don’t crash into the cliffs?” said Onica from the front of the boat. “That's the cave we're looking for up ahead. Amri said we should be able to pull the ship right in.” 

“Are we sure the water in there is deep enough?” asked Tae. “It looks like there's dry ground towards the back.”

“I’ll check it out, ladies,” said Gurjin, climbing onto the rail. "See you in a few.” He let himself fall backwards into the sea below. 

_Show-off_ , thought Rian, not without affection, before closing his eyes again. Even though the boat had stopped moving forward, he failed to feel better, instead transitioning into a new type of seasickness, more in his head than in his stomach. 

Five minutes later, Gurjin resurfaced. “The water’s easily as deep in the cave as it is here. Also, look who I found.” With that, Naia popped up in the water next to him.

“We got our song,” she said. “Did you bring yours?” She scanned the crowd on the boat, then frowned when her eyes saw the splint. “Rian, what happened to your leg?” 

A short while later, they were finally back on dry land. Rian sat on a blessedly solid, blessedly motionless rock while Naia inspected his leg. But no sooner had she gone into the dream-healing trance when she came out of it again.

“This is almost completely healed,” she said. “It looks like you broke it a couple of months ago instead of a couple of weeks.”

“You mean I could have been walking on it this whole time?”

“Not quite. But there’s not much left for me to do.” She turned to her brother. “Why didn’t you just finish healing it all the way?”

“I don’t know,” he said. "I can’t heal bones like you.”

“You can, apparently,” she said.

“You can, apparently,” repeated Rian, “so do it.”

“What do you mean, do it?” Gurjin said. “Naia’s here, she can…"

“You're my best friend. I want you to do it.”

“Fine, but Naia has to come with me in case I mess something up.”

As much as Rian wanted to boost his friend’s confidence in his abilities, he also felt slightly relieved that Naia would be there so nothing would get messed up. But in what seemed like no time at all, the two came out of the trance and removed his splint.

Finally, after two weeks of limping along and feeling like he was getting nowhere, Rian could stand on his own two legs again. He was still a little queasy from the sea, and still a little queasy from the heat, and his thoughts kept drifting to his mother and siblings, who were far from home, and sometimes to old childhood friends, who were no longer among the living. But at least with the healed leg he felt like he was back on track again. 

The urRu lived in the eastern side of the Valley, far from where they had disembarked in the west, so the walk was long, but, Rian sensed as they walked through the shifting mists, perhaps not as long as it should be. Their group followed Naia over the rocks and through the mists, until at last they arrived at the Valley of the Standing Stones.

The Valley, despite being made entirely of dry, bleached rock, somehow felt soft and organic, as if the whole place were a living being. The urRu had hewn their homes wisely into the rock, their craft complementing rather than conquering the windswept landscape. Here and there rounded pillars of stone dotted the valley floor, giving the place its name.

Naia brought them into one of the cave-homes, belonging to urLii, the Storyteller, their host, or at least, the only one of the urRu who paid any attention to them. Rian was amazed that the urRu could ignore them. The chatter of the eight Gelfling and one Podling was by far the loudest, liveliest sound in the whole valley. Rian, though, was mostly interested in the ninth Gelfling, who was nowhere to be seen.

“Hey Rian," said Naia from across the room, “she went up there.” She pointed to the top of the eastern canyon wall. 

The climb was steep and the three suns hot. But he reveled in the freedom of his newly-healed leg as he worked his way up. When he reached the top, he froze in awe of the view. To the south, the tall grasses of the Plains waved in the wind as far as his eye could see. And to the north…

“Home,” he said under his breath.

“I never even knew what a forest was until a few weeks ago,” said a voice. “It really is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Deet?”

“Rian,” she said. “You’re here.”

“Yes. You’re here too.” He tried to think of something more clever to say, but in the end just gave up and sat next to her.

“Where is Stone-in-the-Wood?” she asked, leaning towards him.

“You almost can't see it. But there’s a dip in the trees towards the horizon.”

She shaded her eyes and looked in the direction where he pointed. “I can see it," she said.

It had been easier to pretend that everything was normal in Stone-in-the-Wood back when he couldn't see it. But if he didn't think about it too hard, and didn't notice the lack of smoke rising up from a hundred hearths in a hundred homes, he could still do a fairly decent job of it. _Change the subject_. That was easy enough. There was so much he wanted to ask her anyway.

“Deet, are you all right? I saw the Darkening taken from you in the dreamfast, but before that there were flashes of your time at the castle and you seemed… different.” 

“That's a funny way of putting it,” she said with a half smile. 

“What happened?"

She shrugged. “I thought I could control it but I couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could have helped…” He trailed off as she took one of his hands in both of hers.

“No, it's all right,” she said with a full smile this time. “I learned so many important things. I learned my own limits. I learned that there are some things we cannot do. And I learned that if we don’t stop looking, we may find a better way. Or at least the best way possible.”

“I don’t know what I expected,” he said, placing his free hand on top of hers. “But I didn’t expect for you to be even more full of hope than before.”

“I am, I think,” she said. She stood, pulling him up with her, and led him along the ridge, until they reached a natural tower of rock about three Gelfling tall. She led him around the side to an opening and together, they peered in. 

There were clear signs that someone had lived there, but barely. A simple mat, woven from undyed fibers. A bowl. A cup. A pit for a fire. A walking stick. “What am I looking at?” Rian asked.

She took his arm and leaned into it. “UrSen, the Monk. SkekLach’s other half.”

“Oh, Deet..."

“I had to ask urLii several times before I could get a straight answer about who it was. Amri had to pester it out of him in the end. But I had to know.”

“Do you feel better now that you know?”

“The urRu are very… tranquil. They're certainly not angry about what I did to skekLach and urSen. They just accept the way things are, the way things happen. UrLii said that urSen knew that death was coming long before it did, and stayed here, in meditation, waiting. That doesn't necessarily make me feel less guilty, just... it makes me understand the urRu point of view a little better. And I think that will help.”

“You shouldn't feel guilty, Deet."

She smiled but didn't answer. She turned away from urSen's den and led him back down the ridge towards where they had been sitting before. “That's enough about me,” she said as they sat back down in place overlooking the Forest. “What about you, are you all right?”

“Yeah, actually, it turns out that Gurjin is better at healing broken bones than he thought, and…”

“That’s not what I meant," she said, laughing slightly even though he hadn't intended it as a joke. _Ah, that’s one of those things that maybe I could fall in love with someday_. 

“I’m fine,” he said, sitting back down in his original spot. “I think I managed to bottle up my grief nice and tight, anyway."

“That doesn't sound healthy.” She stared at him with those big, blinking eyes. She couldn't have hidden the worry in them if she had tried. _I’m not going to get away with keeping it light, am I?_

“I feel like I’m still trying to catch up,” he began with a sigh. “From the moment the Skeksis killed…” He paused. _This part is still hard._

"It's all right if you don't want to talk about it," said Deet. 

“From the moment the Skeksis killed Mira,” Rian continued after a few breaths, “it’s like the world I knew just started spiraling away. My father died. Maudra Fara died. My whole clan is falling apart. There were seven children my age in our neighborhood when I was growing up. Between the failed castle guard rebellion and the Maudra Fara’s failed attack on the Skeksis, only two of us are still alive. After the battle in Stone-in-the-Wood, there was so much going on, with you, and with the shard, and all the planning that I barely even gave myself the time to count the number of friends I’ve lost, let alone think about it.”

“And it all hit at once?” she asked.

“I didn’t let it hit. I can’t let it hit. I just want things to go back to normal.”

“I don’t," said Deet.

“I… what?”

“Do you know what happened when I first came to Stone-in-the-Wood?”

“No?”

"It was the first time I was called a dirty Grottan.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe you’re right, maybe the Stonewood don’t deserve..."

"No, it’s not about the Stonewood. The same thing happened in Ha’rar. It was everyone. And it wasn't just against the Grottan, it was all of us against each other.”

“You’re right, the clans are united now. That's better at least.”

“It has to be more, Rian. After meeting Raunip I'm even more sure of that. It has to be more than seven separate groups lending their seven separate armies to a common fight.” She stood, and turned so that she was looking down into the Valley. “It has to be like that,” she said, pointing to their friends below, a group of friends and lovers spanning five clans, six if you counted him.

“There was almost something like that at the castle,” Rian said after a pause, “Stonewood, Vapra, Spriton, Drenchen, even a few Sifa, all living and working together. But it... it wasn’t made to last. Some of the commanding officers stay for life, but most castle guards leave before thirty. If none of this had happened, in ten years or so, Gurjin would have gone home I'd probably never have seen him again. And Mira and I wouldn't have been able to stay together. Maybe if we had gotten our acts together and got promoted and stayed in the castle. But it's hard to have children if you’re two officers in the guard, so it wouldn’t have lasted beyond us. Maybe we could have made a life together at Stone-in-the-Wood…” He thought of Kylan's Stonewood father and Spriton mother, living alone at the edge the Forest and the Plains. “But probably not. We certainly couldn't have been together in Ha’rar.”

“Plus,” he said, “I learned today that I get very seasick, so running away to join the Sifa would have been out.”

“I think," said Deet, “that it’s desperately sad that you've lost so many friends. And I hope that you get to go home someday. But…"

He took her hand again. “…that's not the same thing as going back to normal.”

“Better than normal," said Deet, leaning into him. “I won't accept anything less.” 

She was so close that he could feel her breathing. A month ago he had still been at the castle, living in that other world that he was finally starting to realize was gone forever. 

“I'm not ready yet," he said quietly into her hair.

“I know,” she said.

"But I will be soon.”

"I know.” She smiled a very sweet, very kind smile. 

And then she grabbed him by the shirt and hurled them both off the side of the cliff. Once his stomach had lowered back down from his throat, his laughter joined hers as they swooped back down into the Valley, where he landed safely on his own two feet.

******

The Great Sun had passed its zenith, the Dying Sun overhead and the Rose Sun close behind it, creating complex patterns of shadow and light in the Valley of the Standing Stones. Through a window of urLii’s residence, Kylan watched the waves of darkness and light as they rippled over the urRu outside, some of whom were fiddling with tools in workshops, others meditating on spirals, one mixing a strange concoction of herbs and powder into a cauldron. All ignored the Gelfling, all went about their business as if nothing at all was altered in the world.

His train of thought was broken as Naia sat down heavily at the table beside him. “We need you to pay attention,” she said. 

“Sorry,” he said, turning back to the group at the table.

“What were you looking at?” asked Brea, peering out the window. “Have they started making spirals again? I have so many questions about urRu spirals.” 

Naia banged a hand on the table. “Not you too. We need to focus. How did you two manage to get anything done in Ha’rar?” 

“Sometimes the best ideas come to you when you’re staring out the window,” Kylan said, smiling at Naia’s impatience. As expected, it worked, and her frown shifted into a smile.

“All right,” said Naia. “To continue our conversation, I get the whole thing with etching the musical staves over the spiral you found in Raunip’s book. And Amri has the unDarkened Crystal song that you need to complete the design. But Amri doesn’t know musical notation. So what’s the next step?”

“You can teach me musical notation,” said Amri. “I love learning new things.”

“Sure,” said Kylan. “Are you a musician?”

“Not at all.”

“Then it will probably take a few weeks.”

“Okay,” said Naia, “teaching Amri musical notation is off the table.”

“I have a better idea anyway,” said Kylan. He glanced out the window again, watching the urRu coming and going about their business, not hostile, but paying the Gelfling among them no mind. “I think we should dream-etch it,” he said. “The spiral symbol combined with the two staves and all the notes.”

“Sure,” said Amri. “Like, on a piece of paper or something?”

“No, I think we should find a corner of the Valley and dream-etch it into the rock.”

“What?” asked Naia. “Why?”

“Because… because we’ve all come so far in order to find this song, and it feels like we should make a moment out of it. And because this is the last safe place in Thra, and if we’re lost, if the Gelfling are lost, at least there will be a record of us here, and wise creatures to look upon it on from time to time.” 

He looked back out the window at the oblivious urRu and then back at the three faces of his friends around the table. “It just seems like a way to make ourselves visible.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Brea. 

“I like the sound of visible,” said Amri. “I’m in. Let’s do it. How do we do it?”

“You can dream-etch at will, right?”

“Yes. I’m not, like, great at it,” he said, “but I can do it.”

“We dreamfast, you share the song with me, I envision what the spiral and the staves are supposed to look like, and we dream-etch it together.”

“I honestly don't know if I am capable of doing that,” said Amri. “But I’m happy to give it a try.”

“Sounds great,” said Naia, pushing back her stool and rising from the table. “Let’s do it now.” Kylan smiled and followed. _She_ has _been very patient. For her._

It took longer than expected to find all the others. They found Gurjin, Tae, and Onica talking on one of the rocky outcroppings lining the canyon walls, then woke up Hup, who had been napping off his seasickness in the shade. Rian and Deet were nowhere to be found, but eventually fluttered down together from the ridge above. The group of ten at last gathered in a suitable corner of the valley, out of the way but still in view, and stood under the light of three Suns.

Kylan pressed one hand to the dusty earth and the other to Amri’s, as Amri did the same. The dreamfast fired and two distinct patterns of vibration rippled out from one man’s mind to the other’s, until the waves met and merged. Kylan’s mind flooded with Amri’s memories of the quivering strings deep within the crystal vein, of hearing the notes of its song, and, in turn, Kylan shared the memory of the spiral, of the staff with the song of the urSkek etched upon it, and of the smaller staff awaiting the song of the unblemished crystal. Amri held the diagram in place in their shared mental space as Kylan transcribed the notes of the song that vibrated out from Amri’s memories. The image of the annotated spiral filled their joint mental vision, and then, as easily as if their minds had been one, the two men activated the dream-etch.

A flash of blue light, and Kylan was back in waking life, kneeling on the ground next to Amri. Surrounding them was the spiral, the staves, the notes, dream-etched into the brown rock of the valley floor.

“You’ll have to do the colors again,” he said to Brea with a smile.

Actually,” said Brea, rummaging through her bag, “I did bring my oil paints with me.” She pulled out a tube and handed it to Rian. “Here,” she said. “You can make the purple.”

“We don’t actually have to color it in,” said Rian. “We can just write the names of the colors where they go.”

“We’re doing this for the _effect_ , Rian. After all this time, don’t you want to revel in our accomplishment?”

“I guess I can’t argue with reveling in accomplishment,” said Rian, taking the purple.

“I think it’s kind of fun,” said Deet, who had taken a tube of paint from Brea and was already mixing it into a handful of sand from the ground. “Look! I made green!” She walked over to the spiral. “Which one’s green?”

As his friends got to work mixing paint and sand, Kylan dream-etched the names of the relevant colors within the circles, so the diagram could still be read once the colored sands had blown away, while Brea worked on making multiple sketches for their records. As the Great Sun and the Dying Sun disappeared behind the ridges of rock above, leaving only the low light of the Rose Sun to illuminate their task, urLii wandered over to offer them some drinking water, and then wandered away again. One or two of the other urRu occasionally turned their heads in the direction of the Gelfling, but soon enough turned back to their various tools and tasks. 

With the last rays of the Rose Sun slanting upon it, leaving the crowd of Gelfling in shadow, the dream-etched spiral was complete, its dark lines cut into the brown rock, and ornamented with handfuls of colorful sand.

“Lovely,” said Naia. She put a hand crusted in sand and dried blue paint upon Kylan’s shoulder. “Can you play it?”

“Brea, can I borrow your notebook?” He took it from her and drew a fresh staff, then began combining notes along the spiral as they had theorized. Half-white green, then gray rose, then black purple, and so on for seven or so more. Then, at last, the song was complete. Despite its complex origin, it was a relatively simple collection of notes, easy enough to play on a regular firca. He took his out and played the song through once.

Nothing happened.

“Hmm,” he said. “I assumed the length of the notes would be even, but maybe if I try…”

“Brea, you’re glowing,” said Naia.

“Oh,” said Brea, clutching her left side.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, no, it’s just…” She put her hand to her collar and reached down into her dress in a determined yet choppy way that was not particularly graceful but, in Kylan’s opinion, incredibly endearing. A moment later, she pulled out the crystal shard.

“Where have you been keeping that?” asked Rian.

“Strapped to my torso between my third and ninth ribs, if you want to be specific. You can never be too careful with lost relics.” She eyed Rian suspiciously. “Where did you keep it when you had it?”

“In my pocket, like a normal person.”

“Well, that was nowhere near careful enough if you ask me.” She turned back to Kylan. “Play it again and let's see what happens.”

Kylan played the song again, and from within the shard came a pale blue-white light.

“What was that?” Naia said.

“It lit up!” said Brea. 

“That’s it?” asked Rian. 

“It _lit up_ , Rian,” said Brea, waving the still-glowing shard at his face. “And got warmer, too. It’s fascinating.” 

“So what do we do next?” asked Naia. 

“We go back to the castle?” said Rian. “We replace the shard, play the song, and this time the crystal heals, instead of rejecting it?”

“I’d love that to be true,” said Brea, “but at this point it’s still speculation. I’ll put it on the list though.” She started rummaging through her bag, looking for the notebook she had just handed to Kylan. He took her free hand and placed the notebook in it, and she absentmindedly started writing.

“What list?” asked Rian, peering over her shoulder.

“Our brainstorming list, obviously,” she said.

“Onica,” said Kylan, “What about your vision from Stone-in-the-Wood? It’s the only one that we haven’t used yet, surely it has to be relevant.”

“Seven circles of seven Gelfling,” Onica repeated from memory. “We sang and the skies filled with flames, and the story of the future was written in the ruins of Stone-in-the-Wood.”

“We sang,” said Brea. “We sang in the vision. Was it this song?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear it. But what else could it be?”

 _Onica’s vision song = spiral crystal song???_ Kylan watched Brea scribble in her book, beneath _Play song, replace shard, heal Crystal?_

“So that’s it?” said Gurjin. “Seven circles of seven Gelfling and then we chant this song? Where are the circles? Does it matter?”

“I don’t know,” said Onica. “We could try making a pocket in dreamspace again. That’s how I got the first vision. Maybe I’ll have another one.”

“ _Pocket… in… dreamspace… again_ ,” Kylan heard Brea mutter under her breath as she wrote. 

“We’re not getting anywhere,” said Rian.

“Not getting anywhere?” said Brea. “We’re making a list.” She held up her notebook for him to see. “Once we get all of our ideas out, we can formulate a plan, and a backup plan, and…”

Kylan placed a calming hand on her arm. “There’s one thing we can try first that may save us time,” he said. He turned to look at the urRu, each one busy at work in their own cave, oblivious to the goings-on around them. “We can ask them what they think.”

******

UrSu placed a long finger on the corner of a dry, ragged page, lined with the impressions of the grassy fronds which he had so many trine ago mixed with water and pulp and paste to make the paper. He paused, meditating on the grassy fronds, and the stream from which he had plucked them, before turning the page with great deliberation.

He did not pay any mind to the Gelfling who had suddenly filled the Valley with their quests and songs and chatter and flurry of activity. Nor did he pay any mind to the flash of blue light that briefly burst from their direction. And he did not pay any mind when urLii wandered on over to his reading table and cleared his throat, waiting to be acknowledged.

“They need our help,” said urLii at last, upon not being acknowledged for several minutes.

“We can’t interfere,” replied urSu, not looking up from the book. 

UrLii deliberated for a moment before strolling back over to the Gelfling to deliver the message. Relieved that the whole difficult business was over, urSu placed his finger on another page, recalling the fronds used to make the paper, how he had discovered them slightly downriver from the previous ones. He was about to begin reading when a voice cut through his concentration.

“Hey!”

One of the Gelfling was approaching his platform, a Stonewood, if urSu recalled the symbol on his clothing correctly. Horrible things had happened to the Stonewood.

“Look, we’re trying to save our people, all of our people. The Gelfling and the Podlings and the Arathim and all of the creatures of Thra. If there’s anything you know that can help us, about the Crystal or the Skeksis, or anything, please tell us.”

 _It seems I must engage with this moment._ urSu ran his hand along the the linen cover of the book, recalled plucking the flax, winnowing it, retting it, heckling it, countless trine ago, back when the Stonewood had called themselves the Woodland Folk, and he had called himself SoSu. He recalled the Woodland Gelfling who had provided him with the flax, assisted him in its preparation, or at least, he remembered their faces, even if he could not remember their names. He shut the book, gently, then worked his way down the ramp to the crowd of Gelfling below.

“My dear Gelfling,” he began, “the urRu deplore the many crimes of the Skeksis. But it is our vow not to interfere with your matters. When we were urSkeks, we did much harm even when we tried to do good. We will do no more harm.”

“Honorable Master…” the Stonewood Gelfling began, but he never got to finish.

“What a load of sog,” said the tallest Gelfling. “Harm is being done. Harm is being done _right now_. Can’t interfere… do you want to see what’s happening while you sit around not interfering?” With that, the Gelfling began to disrobe. UrSu looked at him quizzically. _What a strange behavior. All these years and I still don’t understand…_

“Do you see that?” the Gelfling said, turning his back to urSu. urSu hadn’t seen a Gelfling’s back in a very long time, but he was fairly certain that it wasn’t supposed to look quite like that. 

Something within him unsettled.

“That’s how they drain us,” the Gelfling continued. “They take their machine and they stab us with it, and they suck our souls out of our bodies so that they can drink them. My sister and my mother are the best healers I know, and even after they did everything they could do, these scars are still there. And that’s Thra. It’s been tortured and tormented and even now the best we can hope for are scars, because scars mean we’ve survived at least.”

“I’m sorry, young Gelfling, but you must understand. If the urRu get involved, we may only make things worse than they are.”

“Aren’t you listening? _They drink our souls._ How can it get worse than that?” He turned to the crowd of Gelfling behind him and held up his hand, as Gelfling did for a dreamfast. “Kylan, can you play this?”

“Yes,” replied another, a songteller, apparently. “Play what exactly?”

“The sound the Crystal made when Rian tried to heal it. The high-pitched sound right before it spit out the shard.” He gestured again with his hand.

“Gurjin, you don’t have to do this,” said the Stonewood.

The songteller lifted his hand halfway. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” he said, and he raised his hand to his friend’s to hear the memory of the sound.

“I think I can play it,” said the songteller, when they returned. “Will you be okay, though?”

“Do it.”

The songteller played a loud shrill note, one that the firca was not really made for, but could be coaxed out of it anyway. As he played, the shard flashed a dark violet, and the Gelfling woman who held it dropped it, as if it were very hot, or very cold.

The tall Gelfling’s eyes turned white and milky, and he fell to his knees. Behind him, another Gelfling, urLii’s friend from Grot, shouted out in shock, his eyes, too, melting into whiteness. Two of the Gelfling women supported him as he fell, and the songteller stopped playing. UrSu unsettled further.

“Gurjin, Amri, are you two okay?” the songteller asked. The Grottan nodded weakly.

“I’m fine,” said the tall one, still kneeling, but looking up at urSu with clear eyes. “They’ve drained at least twice seven sevens of us, because that's how many castle guards there were and now there’s only four of us left. They tried to drain me but I was lucky enough to be rescued before they could finish. But I will always be like this. I will never be completely okay.”

UrSu cast his eyes from the tall Gelfling to the Grottan, then to each of the small faces before him. His spirit had been unsettled, and therefore opened to new thoughts. For the first time since they had arrived, he noticed how varied their party was. UrSu had hidden away long before the Gelfling clan divisions had solidified, and he had difficulty telling which Gelfling belonged to which, but he was fairly certain there were several different clans represented. And, of course, there was the Podling with them, a Podling who had come as a friend, not a servant. He noticed for the first time an Arathim Threader, perched peacefully on the shoulder of urLii’s Grottan. 

All of Thra, it seemed, had come to his doorstep for aid. Perhaps it was time to give it. 

“I will speak,” said urSu.

******

The sky had become dark with twilight, but no stars yet shone. Brea followed urSu as he lead the crowd of Gelfling up the ramp to his chamber, anxious for answers. She absentmindedly felt for the shard, checking that it was still there beneath her dress. Even against her skin, now that it had returned to a normal temperature, she could hardly tell it was there. The temperature and light changes in response to the different musical notes had been fascinating, first hot and blue-white, then cold and violet, although the latter had put poor Gurjin and Amri through the wringer. She could hardly wait to hear what urSu had to say about it all.

But first she had to wait for their large group to settle in a circle around urSu on various stools, boxes, carpets. UrSu himself gently placed his walking stick on the ground, looked up at the sky, and waited, for what was anyone’s guess. A light breeze floated through the large open entranceway and blew Brea’s hair into her eyes. She removed it impatiently. Finally, when the first star appeared in the sky, urSu spoke. 

“The urSkeks listen to stars,” he began, “and hear songs of the Crystals reverberating throughout the heavens. By combining the song of our Crystal with the song of another, we forge bridges between worlds.”

UrSu gestured at the spiral that Amri and Kylan had etched into the ground below. “Part of the wizardry of the urSkeks is the spiral. We can combine the spiral with musical notation in this way to encode a bridging song, as some of my colleagues have with this one.”

“How does a spiral of the urSkeks work with the musical notation of the Gelfling?” asked Brea. 

“Who do you think taught that notation to the Gelfling?” he said. He looked down from the stars and at each of their faces. “Although the Gelfling had long music before we helped you to write it down.”

“So now that we have the song,” said Brea, “we can create a bridge between the urSkek world and Thra?”

“It is not so simple,” said urSu.

“Of course not,” Brea heard Rian mutter to her left. 

“The song,” continued urSu, “is a query that you direct at the Crystal of Truth. _How do we send the urSkeks home?_ You must query the Crystal, and hear its response.”

“The Crystal must be asked,” said Deet. “That’s what Raunip said."

“And how do we do that?” Brea asked urSu.

“That…” said urSu. He paused so long that Brea, unconsciously holding her breath until he continued, almost ran out of air. “…is not a question that I can answer.” Brea’s sigh was audible. 

“The ways of our Wizards, or as you might call them, our Scientists, are unlike yours. Different crystals, different suns, different worlds, different creatures, different ways of knowing. Once, the urSkeks thought we could understand your Crystal. It lead to disaster. Now, the Skeksis think they understand your Crystal. You see how well that is working out. If you want to discover how you Gelfling can send us back, and how to heal your Crystal in the process, you will need to use your Gelfling science.”

“What is Gelfling science?” asked Brea. _Geometry? Alchemy?_ But the Skeksis had instructed them in those things as well.

“Your wizardry,” said urSu, as if that made anything clearer.

“You mean the dream-arts,” said Kylan from her left. 

That makes sense, thought Brea. What was it Mother Aughra had said back in Stone-in-the-Wood? _All the children of Thra can connect to the Crystal, but the Gelfling have turned it into many arts._

“Thra has many wise creatures,” began urSu. “The Podlings understand the minds of the crawlies and the flyers and the beasts, making a link between the speechless creatures of Thra and the speeched ones. The Arathim connect to each other, making a network that allows the wise creatures of Thra to speak to each other from great distances. And the Gelfling can connect to dreamspace.”

“So the dream-arts that we have developed are our Gelfling science?” asked Brea. 

“They are pieces of it. Glimpses of your potential. But you have not been able to develop your relationship with your Crystal as you should have, because you have been kept separate from it for so long.”

“Because you separated us from it,” said Gurjin. “Not just the Skeksis, but the urSkeks before them as well.”

“And we were wrong,” said urSu. “Without our interference, you could have learned how to explore other worlds through your Crystal long ago. Or maybe not. Maybe you would have used your Crystal for something else. Something wiser.”

“The dream-etchings,” said Onica from her right. “Large groups of Gelfling trigger dream-etchings when they dreamfast, but before we never knew why.”

“The dreamfasts and the dream-etchings must tap into this connection with the Crystal somehow,” said Brea. “Flashes of our Gelfling science.” 

“ _And the future of the Gelfling was written on the ruins of Stone-in-the-Wood_ ,” added Kylan. “That’s what Onica’s vision must be. If a group of five or nine Gelfling can trigger dream-etchings, then a group of seven sevens most certainly will.”

“And then we can read how to heal the Crystal and send the urSkeks home in the dream-etchings,” said Brea. “We know that the song is our question. We know that we can read the answer in our dream-etchings if seven sevens dreamfast like in Onica’s vision. Now we just have to figure out how to put it all together.”

“We can’t sing the song in a dreamfast,” said Onica. “Dreamfasts are for sharing memories. And we can’t enter a pocket of dreamspace like we did in Stone-in-the-Wood, because that didn’t trigger any dream-etchings, just visions. We need some way to be in the dreamfast and in the waking world at the same time. But I’ve never heard of such a dream-art."

“In encouraging division among the clans,” said urSu, “the urSkeks and later the Skeksis encouraged niche interests in your dream-arts, fragmenting the larger picture of your Gelfling wizardry.”

“So we associate things like dream-stitching with the Spriton and dream-healing with the Drenchen, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Brea.

“That’s what Mother Aughra said to me,” said Naia. “That my family has always been dream-healers because we pass down the knowledge. It’s not an innate ability but a skill to learn.”

“All of what you say is true,” said urSu. “And there is one clan who has delved more deeply into the dream-arts than all others, including the skill you seek: to be in the dreamfast and the waking world at once. Unfortunately, I believe it is the only clan that is not among you at the moment.”

“The Dousan,” said Rian.

“So we need to find a Dousan, then, before we can make any progress,” said Brea.

“At some point, yes, I believe you will. The Gelfling must be completely united.” UrSu returned to the table and placed a hand on the cover of his book. “But as for progress, there is perhaps something you can do now. All of you here have heard the song played, so you all have the memory of the song. Surely you can work with that.”

******

The sea glittered in reddish-violet flashes as the Dying Sun hovered on the horizon, with the Rose Sun just above it. Seladon would have found it scenic, if not for the task at hand.

“She’s been out there for about a week now,” said Ethri, as Seladon looked through the ship’s spyglass at skekSa’s island. The island was just far enough away that it was difficult to see from the docks of Cera-Na. “Sometimes she goes out for brief sails, but she usually comes back within a few hours. Nothing out of the ordinary compared to her usual behavior.”

“How did she take it, when you said that you joined the alliance against the Skeksis?”

“That’s complicated,” said Ethri. “She’s always saying that she finds most of the other Skeksis insufferable, and I don’t think she’s upset that we’re rebelling against the Skeksis in and of itself. But when I told her the Sifa wouldn’t run away with her across the sea, that we were committed to staying put and helping the rest of you, she lost her temper a bit.”

“I need to go over there,” said Seladon, stepping away from the spyglass. “I need to know why she’s here.”

“Of course,” said Ethri. “I’m sure the Lord Mariner would agree to an audience with the All-Maudra.”

“No, she can’t actually know that I’m there. I’ll have to sneak in.”

“There have been plenty of Vapra who have joined the Sifa. I’m sure it would be easy for you to blend in.”

“I have my own way of blending in,” said Seladon, shifting into the light and back out again. “I just need you to sail me over.”

A short time later, the Dying Sun had set and the Rose hovered just above the horizon, as Seladon sat on a crate loaded on a merchant ship bound for skekSa’s island. The quickly-changing light of the long dusk was a challenge for the dream-shadow, but the subtle shifts it required kept her mind off of the dangerous task ahead.

The boat docked. The captain and crew went off to bring fresh supplies to the Lord Mariner, while Seladon, unseen by all, walked off in the other direction to explore the island. She walked with the wind at her back, her skirts trailing behind her across the low grasses, so that the casual observer would see nothing but the gentle movement of their blades in the breeze. Her wanderings brought her up the hill, which, as she reached the top, she saw was cleaved by a narrow crevice. She fluttered down through the crevice into the sheltered cove below.

To her surprise, the cove contained a boat, and there was a shadow of movement shifting upon it. Seldon recognized the shape of it immediately. Tall, sharp of face and long of arm. _What is skekSa doing here? I thought she was up by the dock._

The last light of the Rose Sun, slipping lower and lower, fell upon the figure’s face, and Seladon held in a gasp. _It’s one of the others_. She recognized him from the Citadel. SkekZok, the Ritual Master, who had stood there and watched as the General murdered her mother. And although she had thought that she’d finally moved past it, the flutter in her heart, the low feeling in her stomach, the conflicting feelings about her mother’s death and everything that had come with it came rushing back. 

The low light of the Rose Sun sank off of skekZok’s face and began retreating across the sea towards the horizon. With Rose Sun dusk would come the full twilight, and trying to dream-shadow in full twilight was tricky. _I don’t have time for a panic attack._ But as she looked down at her hands, they began flickering in the low light. She ducked behind a column of rock and decided to wait for moonrise. 

Before the First Sister appeared above the horizon, skekSa arrived at the cove and boarded the ship. The voices of the Skeksis came floating past Seladon, but they were indistinct. If she waited for moonrise, she would miss their entire conversation. _I need to calm down._

All right. Mother had been murdered. It had been swift and violent and sickening. _And I blamed Brea. I tried to have my sister sent to a fate worse than death_. Her heart beat even faster, and she was fully visible behind the stone column. _Oh Thra, what was wrong with me?_

She held the her that had knelt over Mother’s body in the throne room in her mind, and froze her there. _That was me. I am responsible for what she did. But it’s not who I am right now. And if I want to make up for her mistakes, I need to calm down._

Seladon reached a hand out in front of her, towards the sea where the Rose Sun had just set, and focused on the twilight around it. She calmed her heart, calmed her mind, and entered the shadow-trance. It was hard to examine herself in the low light, but she was fairly certain of her success. She fluttered gently towards the boat and stood in the sand beneath the two Skeksis conversing on the deck. 

“I haven’t even told you the most important bit yet,” said skekSa. “Eight prizes, waiting to walk right into our hands.”

“What prizes?” asked skekZok.

“Rian, of the Stonewood to begin with. Brea…”

“For the love of Thra, skekSa, I don’t know any of their _names_.”

Seladon had never seen a Skeksis roll their eyes before, and she had to stifle a laugh at the expression on skekSa’s face. 

“Rian,” skekSa repeated, “the one who found the Dual Glaive and led the rebellion at Stone-in-the-Wood. Brea, the All-Maudra’s sister and heir…”

Seladon climbed up the splintery old ladder and managed to pull herself and her skirts over the rail, as skekSa listed the entire group who had gone on the mission to the urRu. _How much does she know?_

“… Deet, the Darkened one who chased you around the castle for a week while you cowered like a child. Naia and Gurjin, Maudra Laesid’s two oldest children…”

“Which one is Laesid again?” asked skekZok, his eyes half-glazed over.

“Drenchen. For the love of…” skekSa’s ensuing rant was such a great distraction that neither Skeksis noticed the squeaking boards beneath Seladon’s feet as she found a hiding spot behind some crates near the prow.

“…I know you castle Skeksis don’t care about the Gelfling personally, dear Ritual-Master, but this is basic intelligence. This is _strategy_. This is…”

“Yes, yes,” he replied. “So if we can capture these eight Gelfling, we’ll make a serious dent in their little rebellion. How do we do it?”

“They’re at the Valley of the Standing Stones.”

“Well, I'm certainly not going there.” 

“You don’t have to. But the Gelfling got in by following the ley line that runs through it. Which means…”

SkekZok’s eyes lit up. “There’s only one way in and one way out.”

“By now the Scientist has bred more of his monsters, has he not? Have one waiting at either end of the Valley, and that’s it. A major victory in our grasp.”

“And that much more essence to feast upon. It’s been so long.”

“That’s your business.”

“We can send skekUng to cut them off at the pass on the border of the Plains and Forest, but you’ll have to cut them off on the western side, by the sea. How many of the Garthim can you fit in your ship?”

“With no Gelfling to help me sail, I’ll have to take a small craft. I can fit one.”

“Only one?”

“I heard that one killed four Spitters and a cave full of Darkened beasts in Grot. Isn’t one enough?”

“I suppose,” said skekZok.

“I’ll drop you off now at the cove on the mainland where I picked you up. Take your chariot to the castle and have them send the Garthim to the coast at these coordinates,” she said, handing him a map. “From there it’s only a short sail to the Valley of Standing Stones. If you hurry, I can be there by dawn.”

Seladon held the dream-shadow as they sailed out into the moonlight to a small cove north of Cera-Na. In the confusion of skekZok disembarking from the ship and mounting his chariot, Seladon managed to slip over the side of the boat and flutter down softly to the rocks below. She did not emerge from the dream-shadow until both Skeksis had left. She hid in the darkness until the Second Sister had risen, then, flashing in and out of the double moonlight, made her way down the coast back to Cera-Na.


	11. (3.3) Dark Water and Starless Skies

Part 3.3 Dark Water and Starless Skies  
_A dreamfast, with only minor injuries. The advice of loved ones. Wrangling the Elders. Safe forever. A disregard for circumspect methods._  
POVs: Onica, Naia, Rian, Deet, skekSo

******

Night passed and the Second Sister rose to join the first. After a day and half of sailing, after finally putting together the pieces of the song, after the lesson from urSu, nine Gelfling and one Podling paused to share a meal before taking their next step. Onica sat on a log next to Tae, watching the rest of their party, for the most part only a few years younger than her, but making her feel old as they chatted away over their bowls of stew. _That’s not entirely fair to them_ , thought Onica. _They’ve each been through enough over the last month to age a Gelfling ten trine or more._

Maybe she just didn’t feel like chatting. It was the longest she had gone without Tavra ever since the aftermath of Stone-in-the-Wood, and the distance between them was unnerving. Even back when Tavra had been her old self, Onica had always wondered with each parting if they would ever see each other again. And one small spider seemed to be so much easier than one whole Gelfling woman to get lost in the vastness of Thra. 

Onica decided to distract herself by planning the upcoming ritual, although there wasn’t much to plan. They had used the spiral key to find a new song, and that song was the way they could ask the Crystal how they could heal it. If their large group focused a dreamfast on their shared memory of that song, of the time Kylan had played it for them, the Crystal might give them an answer through a dream-etching. Probably not the final answer, if Onica’s vision from Stone-in-the-Wood still needed to come true, but part of the answer at least. Maybe a next step. 

“Hey, guys?” A voice broke off from the circle of chattering young Gelfling. Onica looked up to see Amri contorting slightly as his Threader climbed up his arm and wound itself around his neck. “I think there's a message for us.”

“Tavra?” asked Onica, once Amri’s Threader had made the connection.

“Yes, I’m here in Cera-Na with Seladon.” Tavra’s voice came spilling out of Amri’s mouth. “We’re all right, are you all right?”

“Yes, everyone’s safe,” Onica replied. 

“Good.” Tavra's voice had switched over to Sealdon’s. “You have to get out of there now.”

“What?” said Brea.

“SkekSa has been spying on us and relaying information to the Skeksis at the castle. They’ve laid a trap, knowing that you’ll exit from one of two ways, given the ley line. SkekSa will be waiting to the west, and skekUng to the east.”

“A trap?” said Rian. “We should leave by another way then. Other than following the ley line. If we ask the urRu…”

“If we’re on foot, it doesn’t matter which we we go, they'll catch up with us and we’re dead,” said Naia. “Amri and I saw how fast those Garthim move firsthand in Grot. We barely outran it on a landstrider, and the landstrider didn’t make it.”

“We have a plan,” Seladon continued through Amri. “SkekSa has sailed off already, but Ethri has sent a fleet of Sifa ships after her. We know that skekSa wants to stay on the good side of the Sifa, so she should let you pass rather than attack you in front of them. We also have a head start, so if you leave now, she might not even catch up to you. Sail down the coast to where the swamps meet the South Sea. Tavra connected to a Spitter in Sog in order to communicate with Maudras Mera and Laesid…”

"How did you manage to do that?" asked Onica. They had started to experiment with communication via Spitters before Onica had left Ha'rar, since unlike Threaders they didn’t require a Gelfling host, but had not yet had any success.

“I think she joined minds with it and managed to control its arms to scratch messages in the mud,” said Seladon's voice. 

“Oh,” said Onica. "That was rather clever for you, Tavra."

“ _For_ me?” Tavra's voice broke back through the connection.

 _Whoops_. “ _Of_ , my dearest. I meant _of_.”

Seladon's voice broke through again. “If you two don't mind, we are in a bit of a rush. There will be a party from Sog waiting for you at the South Sea to lead you back to Great Smerth. You can rest there while we work out the next step.”

“What about skekUng?” asked Rian. “The one waiting on the eastern side of the Valley? I remember him from when I was little and visited the castle with my father. He was rather formidable.”

“We’re going to surprise him,” said Seladon.

“You’re going to attack the Skeksis?” asked Rian.

“Only if necessary. Our primary goal is to get our hands on one of the Garthim creatures.”

“With all due respect, All-Maudra,” began Naia, “you saw in our dreamfast what happened in the waste. I don’t think those creatures can be taken alive.”

“Then we’ll take one dead if we have to,” Seladon said. “At the very least, we need to try our strength against them in battle. We can’t figure out how to protect ourselves until we understand their capabilities.”

“They will be accompanied by Skeksis,” said Naia. “We can’t kill the Skeksis. Now that I’ve met the urRu I believe that more than ever.”

“We know. There will be enough of us that we should be able to chase the Skeksis away. I will be leading an battalion of Vapra on landstriders, plus Maudra Mera will be coming up from the south to meet us with a battalion of her own.”

“You?” said Brea. “You meaning Seladon? You’re leading the battalion?” 

“Of course I am.”

“I… of course.”

“I’ll take care of her, Brea,” came Tavra’s voice. 

_That means Tavra’s going into this battle as well_. Onica knew that that Tavra was perfectly competent in battle, but she also knew that perfectly competent people got killed in battle all of the time, even when they were in their normal bodies and not in a Threader mind-controlling their sister’s. But Brea, with a younger sister’s trust, looked comforted.

“You must leave at once,” said Seladon. “We’ll be in touch.” 

“All-Maudra, wait,” said Onica. “We’ve found what we came looking for, and we’re working on the next step. But we’re probably going to need help from the Dousan at some point. We need to use a dream-art where a large group of Gelfling can be in both dreamspace and the waking world at once.”

There was a pause. “Actually, I’ve received word that Maudra Seethi arrived in Ha’rar yesterday. I will ask her about the matter upon my return from Cera-Na. Keep me updated with any further information. But for now, hurry and get to Great Smerth.” With that, the Threader disconnected from Amri, who coughed a few times, rubbing his neck.

Their peaceful meal broke out into a flurry of activity as blankets and bedrolls were shoved into packs, and farewells said to their host, urLii. Somehow the whole troop of them managed to be standing at the entrance to the western pass in only a few minutes.

“Farewell, young Gelfling,” said urSu, who had worked his way over to the pass as the Gelfling prepared. “We urRu are limited in what we can do. But we will be watchful.”

By the time their party had reached the boat and pulled out to sea, both Sisters were high in the sky, shining rippling paths of pink and white across the dark water. Naia proved to be as fast a learner as her brother, and between the two Sifa and two Drenchen, they were out on the open sea faster than Onica had expected. The wind was in their favor, but of course that meant it was in skekSa’s favor too. 

“Onica,” said Tae from her position seated high atop the mast. “We have company.” 

Onica scaled the mast and gazed out at the moonlit sea behind them. There, on the horizon, a small ship. “How is she here already?”

“She’s been sailing for a thousand trine. She’s had a lot of practice.”

“Oh Thra, where’s Ethri?”

“She’ll be here,” said Tae. “We just need to outrun the Lord… outrun skekSa a little longer.”

Onica dropped back down to the deck.

“Is it her?” asked Brea.

“It’s her.”

“Then we need to do the dreamfast now,” Brea said. She already resembled Tavra so strongly, but when she got that decisive look on her face, she seemed to be her twin. For some reason, it made it harder to say no to her.

“Brea, this is hardly the time. SkekSa is right behind us and…”

“We need to know what the message is before she catches us.” Brea winced at her choice of conjunction. “In case she catches us. We can relay it to Seladon via Threader.”

“And if the boat catches fire?” 

“We just have to risk it,” said Brea.

The combined looks of earnestness and innocence on Brea’s face triggered a several confusing emotions at once. On the one hand, there was the impulse to protect her that Onica had felt ever since she had first wandered into Elder Cadia’s tent what seemed like trine ago. On the other hand, her look had become even more decisive, which made her look even more like Tavra, which, for the first time since she had encountered Threader Tavra in Stone-in-the-Wood, sent a shudder of grief through her that she did not expect. _I miss having her with me, even the way she is now. But I also miss the way she used to be._

“Oh, all right,” she agreed in a confusion of emotion and the urgency of the moment. “If we’re going to go down, we might as well go down in flames.”

Time to re-plan the ritual, quickly. The ritual would be most powerful with all nine Gelfling, but someone had to stay on the sails. Hopefully seven Gelfling would still be enough, especially if they still had six clans represented.

“Tae and Gurjin, can you handle the sails while the rest of us do this?” she asked. They nodded in approval as Onica handed Hup a bucket of water. “If we set the ship on fire with our dream-etching, please toss this on the fire and hope for the best,” she said. Hup did not look reassured. 

The seven remaining Gelfling gathered in a circle. Seven Gelfling, six clans, five versed in the dream-arts, by training or by chance. Onica herself, Naia, and Kylan were practiced in their various arts of course, and Deet had spent a week or so with the powers of the Sanctuary Tree, and Amri had dreamfasted with the crystal vein. Hopefully amongst all of them they had enough spiritual power for this to work the way they wanted it to. 

“When we’re in the dreamfast, Kylan, you go first,” she said. “Start by sharing your memory from the moment you began playing the song in the Valley earlier today. Then we’ll go in a circle until we make it back to me.” Seven Gelfling, fourteen hands raised and joined together. The same song, from seven slightly different angles. When Onica finished sharing her memories of the last few notes, they broke out of the dreamfast.

Three things happened at once. A dream-etching burned its way into the wooden deck of the ship with a quick whooshing sound, skekSa pulled her ship up right alongside them, and Brea began to scream.

“The shard,” Onica whispered as Brea pulled at her dress, glowing in the dark night. _Why didn’t I think about the shard?_ Naia heard Onica’s words and put the thoughts together. She grabbed Brea with one hand and her dagger with the other and cut through the layers of cloth covering the shard until it fell with a clatter on the ground, as bright as a star in the dark night sky. Onica wrapped the scraps of fabric from Brea’s dress around her hand, picked up the still-hot shard, and dropped it in Hup’s bucket of seawater, which fizzled and steamed.

“We need to cool the skin down before I can heal it,” she heard Naia say to Kylan as they tended to the burn on her side. 

Onica left Brea to Naia and turned her attention to skekSa’s ship, which was close enough now that she could see the Skeksis standing on the deck, holding a spyglass and watching their every move.

“Will she board?” Rian stood beside her, his hand on his sword.

“That, or she’ll try edge us over until we crash into the cliffs. Probably easier to capture us then. She’s tough but I doubt she’s a match for nine…” Onica cut off as she saw a strange movement on skekSa’s ship, like a shadow moving against a shadow. Its eyes glowed violet in the night. 

“Is that…?” Rian asked.

“The creature from Naia’s dreamfast,” said Onica. “If she boards with that thing, we’re dead. We need more speed. Rian, can you…”

“I see Ethri!” Tae’s voice came down from the rigging. 

Seven ships flying Sifan flags emerged out of the darkness onto a strip of pink moonlight. They were some of the largest in the Sifan fleet. With more sails, and some with oars, they would no doubt catch up with them shortly. 

“Oh, thank Thra,” said Onica. SkekSa seemed to notice their ship full of Gelfing all turning their attention to the north, and oriented her spyglass in that direction. She slammed it shut, angrily, and lowered her sails. Onica’s ship flew ahead into the dark night, leaving skekSa behind, the latter no doubt concocting a tale about how she had come to the aid of a poor lost Gelfling ship before sending them on their way. _Ha_ , thought Onica, _even without being warned in advance, Ethri would never have believed that I had gotten lost at sea_.

Onica took stock of the ship. Gurjin and Tae had the sails in check. Hup was still holding the bucket of seawater containing the rapidly-dimming crystal shard. Naia and Kylan were tending to Brea’s burns, while Brea pushed her notebook and pencil into Deet’s hands and instructed her to begin sketching the dream-etching.

The dream-etching. Onica hadn’t gotten the chance to look at it. She peered down to where it was burned into the wood of the deck. A long thin line, forked here and there, like a vein, and several circles. In one of the circles was an inverse triangle. 

After everything that happened, Onica’s mind was shot, but nevertheless she ran through all of the symbols she had stored in memory. _A vein?_ A vein was a conduit; it could represent travel, or change, or fluidity…

“River,” said a voice beside Onica. She looked down to see Hup, still clutching the bucket of seawater. He set it down gently and his hand traced the forked line with a finger. “Black River.”

“Oh, yes,” said Onica. “I see it now. The Black River. Five circles to the left, one on the right, and one at the bottom. It’s not a symbol, it's a map. The seven hearths of the seven clans. Those are the seven circles of seven Gelfling from my vision.”

Hup looked back and forth for a minute between the etching and the bucket. He then gently removed the shard from its seawater bath and placed it over the inverted triangle.

“And we need to bring the shard to Stone-in-the-Wood when we do the ritual,” filled in Onica. 

“Yah,” said Hup, with a chuckle. 

“That was amazing, Hup,” said Deet, looking up from her half-sketched rendition of the map in Brea's notebook. 

Onica laughed. “Yes, it was amazing. And now we can finally relax a little bit. Now we know what to do next.” 

The light of twin moons fell upon the dream-etching, the shard, her friends. Soon they would know how to heal the Crystal, and then the future of the Gelfling, of all of the creatures of Thra, would be assured. _We’ll finally be safe_. And in that safety, she would have plenty of time to mourn the life with Tavra she could have had, and learn to appreciate the new life that they’d been granted, as unconventional as it might be. 

As they sailed towards the south, the vision she’d had on the shores of Ha’rar, the vision of a barren, wasted Thra, tried to push its way into her mind, but she pushed it right back out.

******

As the moons set, gray clouds gathered in the night sky, blocking out the light of the stars. In the dark time between moonset and dawn, Onica’s ship rounded the cape and turned east along the southern coast, relying only on their lanterns and the eyes of the two Grottan, who had seated themselves in the mast. But Naia’s less sensitive eyes knew what they were looking for, and were the first to spot the signal lanterns from the marshland where the swamps met the sea.

Naia nodded to her brother and they each grabbed onto a tow-line and dove into the water, passing the ropes over to a group of Drenchen in kayaks, led by their father. A short time later, Onica’s ship had been safely towed to a secure place under the forest canopy. Naia climbed down the side of the ship and into a kayak. She turned to help the still-recovering Brea, when she was entirely hampered in her task by one of her father’s bear hugs.

“My big girl, safely home, not eaten by Darkened nurlocs.”

“You know,” she said, giving in, “someday I’m going to have to look respectable in front of our people.”

“Dad, you’re going to tip over the boat,” said Gurjin as he helped Brea into the kayak. “Not everyone has gills, you know.”

“I remember when you first learned that lesson,” said Kylan.

“You were literally the first person I met who couldn’t breathe under water,” said Gurjin. “Besides, Mom pulled you out before you drowned.”

“Glad to see you safe too, boys. And a welcome to all of my children’s friends.” 

The small fleet of kayaks made its way silently through the dark water beneath the dark canopy beneath the dark, starless sky. A thousand glowing crawlies glittered in the trees around them. Naia felt herself calm in the still moment, and she tried to allow herself a few moments of peace. But the non-stop events of the past few weeks, the Darkening crystal vein in Domrak, the Garthim attack, the journey through the wasteland, their escape on the sea, all of it rattled around in her mind, curling at the edges of her calm, prodding her to keep moving. _There is still so much to do_. 

When they arrived at Great Smerth, the sky had lightened to a blue-gray dawn, and a small crowd awaited them on the docks. Naia's mother, of course, and her two younger sisters. A Stonewood woman with a noticeable resemblance to Rian, and two Grottan men, one holding a sleeping boy, who must have been Deet’s family. 

Pemma waited patiently until Brea disembarked before leaping into the water, tipping over Naia’s kayak, and drawing her down into the water in a fierce embrace. Naia barely had time to fight her youngest sister off before Pemma had moved on to Gurjin’s kayak and done the same to him. Naia laughed as she pulled herself up on the dock, where Eliona, serious as always, waited to give her a proper embrace before greeting their guests.

Naia took her mother’s arm as the crowd of Gelfling on the docks dissolved into a chaos of greetings, embraces, and luggage. “Has Mera left already?” Naia asked.

“First of all, my dear first-born, I am happy to see you again, safe and whole. Second, it’s _Maudra_ Mera. You need to learn to be diplomatic with her, even if you don’t like how she treated your friend as a child. And they left about an hour ago.” Naia’s mother struck forth with her cane and began a firm walk towards the Great Smerth, with a signal to her husband to herd the crowd behind her. 

“So I could probably still catch up with them?” Naia asked.

“Whatever for?”

“I want to go with them. If they’re going to figure out what these Garthim things are, I should be there.”

“Naia, she has thrice seven mounted soldiers and just as many are coming down to meet them from Ha’rar. They don’t need you there.”

“I’m the only person who’s ever killed one. And I have an idea of how to examine one if we manage to capture one alive.”

“And what is that?”

“I’m going to try the dream-healing trance on it.”

“Fascinating,” said her mother as they arrived at the Great Hall. They stopped at the door as she ushered their guests in towards breakfast. “Why?”

“Mother Aughra told me that our healing ability is a way to see things as they are in the now, and to encourage them to become what they should be. Maybe we can use it to see what these Garthim really are. Maybe we could even heal them, if they’re creatures of Thra that the Skeksis have poisoned somehow.”

“It’s a good idea,” her mother said, following the crowd in and taking a seat at the head of one of the long tables. “If Maudra Seladon and Maudra Mera manage to capture a specimen, we should try it.”

“Mother, if I leave now, I can meet Mera before dawn and…”

“ _Maudra_ Mera. And that’s not necessary.”

“But Mom…”

“Naia, I know you are anxious. But now is not the time.” She handed Naia a bowl of boiled sea-grass before continuing in a softened voice. "At least allow your father and I a day or two with the four of you all safely home before you go charging forth into untold danger again." 

It was hard to argue with that. But what her mother didn't see was that if Naia could figure out what these Garthim were, and learn how to heal them, then all four of them _could_ stay safely home indefinitely, no need to charge forth into danger ever again.

The morning meal was fresh from the kitchens as they began eating in the Great Hall, carved out of the Great Smerth itself by Drenchen of generations past, and large enough to seat a hundred Gelfling. A fair number of Drenchen were already awake and eating, and wished welcome to Naia and Gurjin on their safe return. Unlike in the past, however, the hall now also held a smattering of Stonewood and Grottan, and the number of Spriton nearly matched that of the Drenchen. Here and there Naia even saw a few Podlings.

“I’ve never seen a tree so big,” said Deet, cuddling her still-groggy brother beside her. “l can’t believe so many of you can live inside it.” 

“And you all eat together? Everyday?” asked Brea, the still-pink skin on her left side visible through the hole in her shredded dress.

“Still want to move here?” asked Gurjin with a smirk.

“Yes, actually,” she replied. 

Naia picked up a fresh roll and placed three small roasted fish atop it. It was good to be home again, to see her family again. But now she had to figure out how to ditch them all without anyone noticing so she could catch up with Mera’s group and get her hands on one of the Garthim. She ate her meal as quickly as possible, remaining silent as Brea showed her mother the sketch of the dream-etching from the ship, and the two discussed the logistics necessary for the upcoming ritual.

“Onica says the ritual will be strongest if we have a member from each clan make up the seven Gelfling in each circle,” said Brea with a nod to Onica across the table. “So we'll need to send some Drenchen and Spriton up north. Ones well-practiced in their dream-arts if possible.”

“That should be easy enough,” said Naia’s mother, “especially if your Sifan companions here can lend us their ship."

“I’ll be overseeing the ritual at Stone-in-the-Wood,” said Onica. “But Tae should be able to take a group up to Cera-Na easily enough. The ship will fit twice seven, maybe a few more.”

“And then of course we’ll have the shard in Stone-in-the-Wood, so we’ll need extra security there…” said Brea, trailing off as she dropped the pencil she had been pointing with.

“I think maybe this discussion can wait until you’ve gotten some rest,” said Naia’s mother. “You look like you’ve been through quite a bit, Your Highness. I’ll find one of Pemma’s old dresses for you while that one’s being repaired.” 

There was a shuffle of activity as the meal broke up. Rian left with his mother, Deet with her family, and Hup went off with some friends from Sami Thicket, both Podling and Gelfling. Kylan had a usual room he stayed in whenever he visited; he got the key from Naia’s father and left with Brea by his side. Gurjin got up to show Tae and Onica to a guest room. And in all the confusion, Naia grabbed her pack, walked right out of the Great Smerth, and snuck off northwards for the border.

The fastest way to the border would be to travel in the canopy. She approached a large apewood, adjusted her bag so that it wasn’t putting too much pressure on her wings, found a low knotted branch, and pulled herself up.

“I thought Maudra Mera left hours ago,” came a voice from below. Amri. _What’s he doing here?_ She could have sworn he went off with Deet. 

“The Spriton are keeping their landstrider herds at the northern border of the swamp,” she said, looking down at him. “I can grab one and catch up.”

“Naia, you haven’t slept in over a day.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know where they are now. They’re not expecting you. They don’t need you there. If they capture a Garthim, the All-Maudra will tell us. You can go meet them then.”

“And if they have to kill it before I can get there? And what if they can’t capture one? I should leave now.” She glanced up at the next branch, planning her climb up to the high vines.

“Naia...” Something in Amri’s voice made her pause in her climb and turn her attention back down to him. _Normally even when he's dead serious, you can't hear it in his voice_. But she could hear it now.

Amri continued. “Naia, I’ve literally followed you off of cliffs, into bodies of water of unknown depth, across the wasteland pursued by a murderous creature that you had intentionally provoked, and I never hesitated. I was on board with every single one of those decisions. I found them thrilling. You are a thrilling person. But I think that this is a bad idea. Please don’t go.”

“I just want to keep going until we fix everything,” she said. "Until everyone's safe forever." _Until what happened to you and to Gurjin never happens to anyone again_.

“We’re getting closer,” he said. 

“But there's still so much to do.”

“We made boatloads of progress today.”

“Was that a pun?”

“If you found it witty, then yes.” 

The light of Great Sunrise filtered cooly through the forest canopy, dimly enough that he didn’t have to squint his eyes in discomfort. In his eyes, Naia saw tiny golden flecks reflecting in a sea of black, and she noticed how the smile that accompanied his remark didn’t quite make it into them. 

She realized at that moment that everyone else in their group had gone off with friends or family, with someone who loved them, and she had just stormed off completely wrapped up in her own nonsense while he was left behind, alone. 

“Are you tired?” she asked him, jumping down from the tree to stand beside him.

He smiled softly but said nothing.

She took his hand. “We should go to bed,” she said, pulling him along behind her as she headed back towards home. She waited for one of his usual remarks, but instead he pulled her towards him and wrapped his arms around her waist. She leaned back into him and held his hands where they clasped around her. They stayed like that for several breaths, and then hurried home together in the early morning light.

******

Rian struggled to keep his eyes open as the Council of Elders fussily arranged themselves on various logs and stumps in the somewhat private, but more importantly, mostly solid corner of swamp that they were currently using for their meetings. He read the suns through the trees, different trees than the ones he was used to, but the principle was the same. He noted the angles of yellow and red-violet light coming down through the leaves at shallow angles, and a glow of red beneath them. _Oh Thra, is that Rose Sun dawn? Why do Elders have to wake up so early?_

He had only been asleep a few hours when his mother had shaken him awake, telling him that the Elders had requested that he join them at their daily morning gathering. 

"I can tell them to leave you alone," she had said. “But everyone’s been so anxious about what’s been happening. Maudras Laesid and Mera have done their best to keep us up to speed, but they each have a whole clan to attend to, and to be honest, the Elders themselves are not very organized, and sometimes it feels like we just slip through the cracks.”

Rian had sighed into his pillow, remembering his conversation with Talyn in Ha’rar. _It means a lot to us that there's one of us running around with princesses and maudras and everything_. He rolled out of bed and was about to give a dramatic groan when he saw in his mother’s face a quiet, tired sadness that melted a little into hope when she looked at him. So he made his voice sincere when he said, “All right, I’ll go.” 

The sadness and hope in her face became tinged with pride, and the combination was enough to give Rian the will to get up, get dressed, and drag himself to the meeting. Now, as he watched the Elder seated on the stump across from him stand up and rearrange the blanket she was using as a cushion for the fifth time, his will waned. 

A cup appeared in his line of vision. “Have some tea.” Offering the cup was a woman, younger than the more ancient members of the council but still older than some of the youngest. She was tall and rail-thin, her white hair tied up high on her head so that it fell around head like a waterfall. _Which one is this again?_

“Thanks,” said Rian, taking the cup.

“Elder Amia,” she said.

“Uh, yeah, of course…”

“Relax,” she said with a smile. “We’ve never met. I’m from Inwall.” A village in the western part of the forest, not far from the castle. It had been evacuated even before Maudra Fara’s failed attack on the castle. He was about to ask if everyone had made it out safely when Elder Amia addressed the circle. 

“This poor young man can only have gotten an hour or so of sleep before we dragged him out of bed. Let’s get this over with.” 

“I will speak,” said a man that Rian recognized from Stone-in-the-Wood. _Elder Tenin._ He was, like Elder Amia, tall and thin and of middling old-age, but his graying hair was tied low on his neck and his expression was dour.

“As we heard, very briefly, too briefly, from Maudra Laesid this morning, there’s talk of some sort of ‘circle of seven Gelfling' meeting at Stone-in-the-Wood,” he said. “I don’t like it. Hasn’t our home been through enough? Just let it be. Let this ritual happen somewhere else.”

“It’s not just Stone-in-the-Wood,” said Rian, slightly taken aback. He had not expected this to be an issue. He took out a copy of the dream-etching that they had made on Onica’s ship and passed it around to the group. “As you can see from the dream-etching, a circle of Gelfling must form at each clan’s traditional hearth.”

“All right,” said Elder Amia, “I understand that much. But why the traditional hearths? It would be much safer and logistically much simpler to pick other locations that are easier to secure. I don’t like sending any more of our people into unnecessary danger when we have already lost so many.”

At least that was a reasonable point. _Maybe this conversation won’t be so bad._ “We still don’t know for sure," said Rian, “but it probably has to do with the ley lines, the crystal veins that run deep in the earth. Our ancestors must have tuned into important junctures of the ley lines when they built their towns. The ritual must be done at these points in order to secure the strongest connection to the Crystal.”

“But look at this,” said Elder Tenin, jamming his finger at the sketch of the dream-etching from the boat. “Why is Stone-in-the-Wood the only one with a triangle?”

“That’s where we’ll have the shard, and…”

“And what? What does the shard do?”

“We don’t know for certain, but…”

“It seems to me that there’s a lot we don’t know for certain,” muttered Elder Tenin. 

“In Onica’s vision…” Rian began.

“A Sifa witch,” whispered another one of the Elders to his neighbor, the cushion-rearranger, who sniffed and shook her head in stern disapproval of Sifan witches. _Oh Thra_ , thought Rian, _I thought we were at least past that sort of thing._

“We think if we perform the ritual, the shard will vibrate along with our song, in both dreamspace and the waking world, and, in response, reveal instructions on how to heal the Crystal of Truth and send the Skeksis home. In Onica’s vision, once the ritual was completed, the future of the Gelfling was dream-etched on the ruins of Stone-in-the-Wood and…”

“Ruins?” said Elder Amia. “So we’ve given up the Stonewood hearth for lost?” _Oh no, I've lost Amia. The only sane one._

“Why must Stone-in-the-Wood be defaced for this prophecy?” said Elder Tenin. 

“Defaced?” Rian said. “Is it not an honor for our ancestral home to bear the prophecy that will be the salvation of Thra?”

The Elders were, for one blessed moment, silent. It was, of course, not to last.

“I didn’t like the sound of _ruins_ ,” said one. 

“I still don’t know why we’re taking the word of a Sifa witch.”

“And the visions of a Spriton and a Drenchen too, if the rumors are true.”

“And the Dousan will be involved. This twice-dream of theirs. I don’t like the sound of it.”

“Too much wizardry. I don’t trust wizardry. A good dreamfast is all well and good, but beyond that…”

“Listen,” said Rian. _I am too tired for this._ “We don’t actually need your permission. We need seven Stonewood to volunteer to be in the circles. That’s it. If we can have more soldiers to help guard the ritual at Stone-in-the-Wood, that would be helpful. If not, well, we’ll have to make do without.”

“And who is ‘we’, son of Ordon?” asked Elder Tenin. “Do you count yourself among these foreign wizards now? Are you too good for the Stonewood?”

“No, I’m not too good for the Stonewood…” Rian trailed off in frustration. It was as if all the progress they had made, in looking past clan divisions, in focusing on removing the threat of the Skeksis rather than their past squabbles, hadn’t reached the Elders at all. _They’re still stuck in a world that no longer exists. Waiting… waiting to go back to normal._

Rian raised his hands, one towards Elder Amia to his left, another towards the Elder to his right. “I need you to see something. Please.”

After a slight pause, Elder Amia touched her hand to his. One by one, the rest of the circle followed, and Rian initiated a dreamfast. 

He brought them to the hill above the Valley of the Standing Stones, where he had stood with Deet only the day before, looking down below at all of their friends. One by one, he focused in on memories of each of them. Of Deet, standing before the castle gates, succumbing to the Darkening so that they could attempt to heal the Crystal. Of Gurjin healing Rian's leg and helping him escape from skekZok in the woods. Of Amri and Kylan dream-etching the song-spiral, and Onica leading them through the ritual on the boat during their flight from skekSa. 

And all the small moments, of himself and Hup chuckling at Gurjin and Tae, of Brea explaining the difference between a boat and a ship, of the whole group of them sitting around the campfire in the Valley before the call had come for them to flee. And then everything circled back to him and Deet, standing on the edge of the cliff, looking down at their friends from above.

“I’m not a foreigner,” he said when they came out of the dreamfast. “And my friends are not ‘foreigners’ either. And now you’re all caught up on what’s been happening. We need to use the dream-arts, wizardry as you call it, to solve our problem with the Skeksis and the blight. We cannot succeed without it. And whether or not we succeed, the clans cannot go forth separate from one another, like we used to be.” 

The Elders were silent for a moment, then once again broke out into a chaotic sea of mutterings. Rian couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could tell that disapproval still swirled in its undercurrents. He sighed and closed his eyes. _Well, I tried. Maybe now I can just go home and get some sleep._

“I will accept this ritual at Stone-in-the-Wood,” said Elder Amia, her strong voice cutting through the noise. “I fear the wizardry that you speak of because I’m afraid that the prophecies that it reveals will come to pass. I am afraid that Stone-in-the-Wood will fall into ruin. I am afraid that the Stonewood will never again return home to the Forest. I am afraid everything that we built, the way we carve into stone, the way we forge weapons, the way we melt them down again, I am afraid all of our ways will be lost, that all of those trine and trine of tradition will have come to naught. But it is to that tradition that I must defer. Fear is not the way of the Stonewood. We must greet our new challenges with courage. That is our way.” 

“Thank you Elder,” said Rian. 

“And the son of Ordon is right,” she continued. “New ways are coming, whether we like it or not. We need to defer to someone who understands them. As you say, Rian, the expedition to Stone-in-the-Wood will happen with or without our support. Well, I support it. But I want you to lead it.”

“As you wish. I will happily lead the contingent of Stonewood to…”

“No. The whole thing. Maybe things will change in the future, but for now it’s still our home. I want a Stonewood to lead the expedition.”

Rian wasn’t exactly sure what “leading” the expedition meant, but he was sure his friends would give him at least a nominal title if it meant getting the Stonewood Elders on board. “All right,” said Rian. “I’ll speak to…” Honestly he wasn’t sure who in their group was actually in charge, but he figured picking the highest ranked would placate the Elders. “I’ll speak to Princess Brea about the matter.” The Elders muttered to themselves, in what Rian thought was, at last, approval.

But Elder Amia would not be fooled. She stood, her full height imperious. “This is important, Rian,” she said. “I like your vision, of the friends and family you have made across clan divisions. But as the clans mix together, the Stonewood deserve to mix in a part equal with the other seven, even if we are without a maudra.” Rian saw in her face the same sadness and hope he had seen in his mother’s. _Who has she lost? A child? A grandchild? More than one?_ “We need to know that we can rely on you.”

He thought of everyone who had died while he still lived. He had personal memories within him of more than twice seven Stonewood, lost to the Skeksis, some unable even to return to Thra. He couldn’t save them, but he could at least bear their memory forward.

“I swear to you, Elder,” he said. “Whatever future the Gelfling may have, I will make sure that the Stonewood are a part of it.”

******

By the time Deet awoke, the Great Sun was already at its zenith, but in the depths of the swamp under an endless canopy of apeknot trees, the sunlight was greened, shaded, subdued. Deet had gazed upon endless new landscapes since first venturing to the surface, but for the first time since her village was lost to the Darkening, here in the shady, sheltered swamp-forest, she felt like she could feel at home somewhere again.

She let herself wander through the trees, learning to step carefully for solid ground, or else to follow along apeknot roots, or to climb up into the trees and flutter among the branches. Alighting on a branch several stories high but still far below the canopy, she scooted into a ray of sunlight and closed her eyes, far from the Castle of the Crystal and the person she had been when she was there.

It was then that she heard the voice.

“Little one,” it said, a voice like a sigh or the wind creaking through the branches of the apeknots. It was oddly familiar.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Deet heard in reply not the voice again, but a gentle splashing sound coming from the swamp below. She looked down to see a ripple dancing along the surface of the murky water. She stretched out her wings, stepped off of the branch and glided along, following the ripple deeper into the swamp. 

It led her into a tangle of apewood roots large and sprawling enough to be a forest in and of themselves. The ripple disappeared with a splash upon one of the larger roots, on which Deet landed. For a moment, all was calm in the little forest of roots and vines and swampwater. And then, with a splash, a strange beast like a long eyeless worm emerged from the water and began to circle around her. 

“Hello, little one.” The voice now came like the wind on the water, but Deet once again heard something familiar in it.

“You’re not a beast,” she said. “You’re a root.”

“I am not the first hearth-tree that you have spoken to,” the voice said.

“It was the Sanctuary Tree in Grot that sent me out on my first quest. But I thought all of the Great Trees had perished.”

“I am far enough from the castle and the ley lines that connect me are by such a circuitous path that the Darkening has not taken hold of me yet. I am able to shelter the Gelfling for a little while longer at least.”

“Shelter... you're the Great Smerth?”

“I am.”

“Then you're threatened as well? I…” _Just when I thought I had found a place where I could feel safe._ “I guess none of us are safe anymore. What will happen to the Drenchen?”

“The Drenchen know that I am threatened, and their clan-mother prepares for the future. I may last out another generation, but no longer. And if the blight quickens, not even that long.”

“How can I help?” Deet asked. 

“I have not summoned you today to ask for help for me, but for Thra. Rather, for the one who is both the good of Thra and the good of the stars.”

“I don't know who you're talking about.”

“I believe you do. I felt him take the powers of Vliste-Staba from you in the waste.”

 _In the waste..._ “You mean Brother Raunip.”

“Yes. He is tied to Thra as Mother Aughra is tied to Thra, and all of the Great Trees know him.”

“And he’s in trouble?”

“Brother Raunip Darkens. He was close to death before he met you, and so he willingly sacrificed himself. That was a good. But he has one more task to do, one that will be hampered by the Darkening within him. I will show you, if you will see it.”

Deet paused. She had not hesitated when the Sanctuary Tree had offered her first adventure, and, later his powers. As a result, her mind had been expanded beyond anything she had ever dreamed, but her spirit had been pushed to its limit. But Raunip had sacrificed himself in order to save her, without a moment’s hesitation. She couldn’t hesitate now. She raised her hand, and the root wrapped itself around it.

A vision came to Deet, of skekGra and urGoh, of an urSkek over the sea, of its sad, shameful song, of its blemished heart. Next came Raunip, now making his way through the Endless Forest, weak, tired, born by Lore. Every so often, a swirl of violet swam behind his eyes, a crackle of dark lightning over a stormy sea. Then, a moonless night, a dark sky full of stars shining down on seven circles of seven Gelfling, a peaceful song echoing through the night. All of a sudden, a violet light in the sky, and the night ripped open, and Deet heard a shrieking sound like no other.

 _The heart of the urSkek must not become blemished again_ , said Smerth-Staba in their joint minds. _Nor must the blemish taint the shard. Brother Raunip must loose himself from the Darkening before the ritual at Stone-in-the-Wood, or he must give up his quest to save the urSkek._

In the vision, Deet found herself back at Stone-in-the-Wood, near the circle of seven Gelfling, but not among it. She felt, once again, the Darkening jutting up against her soul like jagged rocks biting into the sea. She reached a hand out towards what appeared to be a gnarled tree branch, desperate to grab hold of it…

And then Smerth-Staba let her go. She felt the root brush gently against her cheek, and heard the sound of the wind in the trees, this time without words. 

The root went back down into the water, but Deet did not leave her spot, alone in the swamp, for a long while. At last she stood, climbed into canopy and leapt into the air, fluttering back towards town until she found who she was looking for, asleep against a tree near a circle of stumps and logs. 

“Deet?” Rian asked, waking as she landed on the ground in front of him with a soft whooshing noise. He stood and dusted himself off. “I had a really crazy mor…” his words cut off as she walked into his arms, put her hand to his, and raised their joint hands, not quite initiating a dreamfast.

“There’s something I think I might have to do,” she said. She put a light pressure on his hand where they touched. “May I?”

He nodded and straightened out his hand, and they entered the memory of her conversation with Smerth-Staba. When the Great Tree made its request for her to take the Darkening from Raunip once again, she felt him pull back, ready to voice his disapproval, when she gently pulled him back in, back to when she was in the Castle of the Crystal, to when she had tried to keep herself from killing the Skeksis Emperor, but failed, not once, but twice. In the memory, the face of urSu was superimposed upon that of the Emperor as Deet unleashed the Darkened energy upon him, before Lore, the creature of skekGra and urGoh and Brother Raunip, the ones who needed her help now, saved her from becoming a murderer again and again.

She then brought them back in the waking world. His arm was around her waist, her head on his chest, and their two hands still pressed against each other as they had been in the dreamfast.

“I have to help them,” she said in a whisper. “I couldn’t control the Darkening before, but maybe this time, knowing that I bear it in order to save others, I’ll be able to rein it in.”

She waited for him to protest, but instead he intertwined their fingers where their hands met. He lowered their joined hands, and, eyes still closed, he put his head to hers. “I would have killed him," he said softly into her ear.

“What?”

“In the battle, I refused to kill the General, but I was in my normal state of mind then. If I had the Darkening swimming inside of me, and if I had been as exhausted and confused and lonely as you were, I would have absolutely killed the Emperor. And all the rest. I wouldn't have let Lore stop me. And I wouldn't have tried only twice. I would have tried again and again until I destroyed them all.”

“Do you think I should have…"

“No, I would have been wrong. I’m just saying, you don’t realize how strong you are and how kind you are.” He opened his eyes and looked into hers. “I would not have made it.”

“You don’t think I should do it,” she said. “You don’t think I should take the Darkening back.”

“I just want you to know that you don't have to do it out of guilt.”

“I…”

“Just humor me and take away the guilt. Do you still want to do it?"

Deet replayed the images from Smerth-Staba in her mind. Not just of Brother Raunip, but of the Heretic and the Wanderer as well. Of the urSkek singing over the sea who was so desperately sad. 

“Yes,” she said. “They’re my friends and they need my help.”

Rian was silent for a long time. She was about to ask him if he was all right when his fingers were on her lips and then his lips were on her lips, for the briefest of moments. 

“How can I argue with that reason?” he said.

She put her arms around his neck and held him more tightly than before. The canopy of the swamp forest sheltered them from above, like the strong, soothing ceilings of Grot. Around them, the beasts and the crawlies cried out with strange calls, but their music blended together in a harmony that mirrored that of the creatures she had once spent hours listening to from her bed in Domrak Village. _Maybe it won't be safe here forever_ , she thought, _but maybe nowhere is safe forever._

Gently, very gently, the memory of her vision from Smerth-Staba floated back into her mind, of Raunip, lying half-dead, looking up at her, but this time he was in the swamp instead of the forest near Stone-in-the-Wood. The flash of violet in his eyes flared up again, and its dark energy rippled through the green afternoon of this place that she could maybe call home one day, before dissipating into the light of three suns filtering through the canopy.

******

All three Suns were high in the sky and the Castle of the Crystal was filled with warm ripples of bright daylight. This was at great odds with the Emperor’s current mood. He sat on his throne, staring intently into space, daring any of the others to test him. It had been days since the Grottan girl had escaped, weeks since the battle at Stone-in-the-Wood, even longer since his last dose of essence. And here he sat, afraid to move, lest another piece of himself fall out of place, figuratively to some extent, but also very much literally.

_Enough of this sullen weepishness. If essence is required, then go out and get it._

He let his eyes dart around the room at possible designees for such a task. SkekEkt and skekAyuk stood in the corner, whispering to each other about some nonsense no doubt. Well, let them whisper. Neither had the constitution for this sort of thing anyway. SkekOk sat at the table dozing, his face on his plate. SkekZok was out of view, no doubt in his rooms recovering from his reconnoitering with skekSa. And skekUng and skekSil were still out of the castle, waiting for the band of traitorous Gelfling rebels to emerge from the Valley of the Standing Stones.

 _It’ll have to be that confounded Scientist._ Still, to obtain essence, he would need to use the Garthim, and who better to command the creatures than their creator. 

The Emperor bolted upright, causing skekEkt and skekAyuk to cry out in surprise, which in turn startled skekOk out of his sleep. “I’m going to the Garthim-pits,” he declared, and strode out of the room, so impressively that he almost convinced himself that he was still strong and hale and held-together.

“Lord Scientist,” he boomed as he entered the pits, sending two sevens of Garthim in various states of growth into a nervous scurry. “As your creations increase in number so does the hope of the Skeksis.”

“Thank you, Emperor," said the Scientist, looking up from spraying one of the newly-hatched Garthim with some foul-smelling mist. “I am honored by your praise.” He placed the atomizer on a cart and made a small but sufficient bow.

The Emperor picked up the atomizer and gave it a few cursory squeezes. The ensuing mist smelled of the decomposing Spitter they had once found in a water duct beneath the throne room. _Everything about these Garthim creatures is disgusting._

“Let’s take one out to the Plains,” he said. 

“Now?” asked the Scientist. He picked up a long, many-pronged instrument and began applying it vigorously the Garthim’s shell, scraping off what remained of the goop that had adhered to it during the hatching process.

“Yes. My dear Scientist. The essence that you so ingeniously discovered has been a great boon to us all. And yet, it has been weeks since we have last feasted upon it.”

“If skekUng’s mission is a success, we will have at least eight Gelfling to feast upon,” the Scientist said. “And we will strike such a blow to their little rebellion that their defeat will be within our grasp.” 

“When?” skekSo roared, surprised at his own loss of composure. “Tomorrow? The day after? I need essence now.” He grabbed the instrument out of the Scientist’s hand and threw it to the ground with such force that it rattled around for an awkward amount of time before stilling. 

“You and I shall take one of the creatures,” said the Emperor, when the rattling had stopped, “and find a village. Somewhere. Anywhere. And we will bring back a feast’s worth to drain.”

The Scientist glanced down at the pronged instrument, lying where it fell, then back up at the Emperor. “All of the Gelfling villages between the swamp and the mountains have been evacuated.”

“There have to be isolated homesteads here or there.”

“Perhaps, but even if a few haven’t evacuated, it will be like finding a needle in a haystack. It will take longer than waiting for skekUng to return.”

“Then we will find Podlings for all I care,” said the Emperor.

“But I thought you desired essence, Sire?” 

“Podlings contain essence, do they not?” he replied with certainty, even though he had no idea whether or not his words were true. “We shall drain Podlings until we can get our hands on Gelfling again.”

“But Sire,” said the Scientist tentatively, “the machine has never been tested on Podlings. Without careful experimentation, pre-trials and trials, we won’t know…”

 _Cursed fool with his circumspect methods._ “Stick them in the machine and drain them,” shouted the Emperor. “How hard can it be?”

The Scientist stood silently for a moment, and the Emperor did not appreciate the look with which he was regarded. And yet, in the end, he allowed his anger to be tempered with skekTek’s appropriately deferential, although delayed, response.

“Yes, my Emperor,” said the Scientist, bowing again. “I will select a mature Garthim and meet you at the gates at once.”

The Emperor smiled. Surely taking out a village of Podlings would be a simple task. He’d be drinking essence before dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 complete! Part 4 starts next week!


	12. (4.1) The Wise Creatures of Thra

Part 4.1 The Wise Creatures of Thra  
_Showdown on the Plains. Finding another way. A normal family breakfast. The dark part of wisdom. The good counsel of trees._  
POVs: Seladon, Kylan, Gurjin, skekSa, Raunip

******

In the last dark of the night, when the moons had set and only the stars remained, a spindly forest of white threads passed through the trees of the Dark Wood like a ghostly twin. By the time the cavalry made its way past Stone-in-the-Wood, triple rays of midday light shot through the trees, paralleling the landstriders’ legs as they galloped alongside the Black River. When at last the three dozen landstriders emerged from the Wood and onto the Plains, the long dusk had progressed until only the Rose Sun still lingered above the horizon. The ghostly figures of the thrice seven landstriders stepped onto the Plains, where they were met by another thrice seven in the fading pink light.

“You made good time,” said Mera as she brought her landstrider next to Seladon’s. 

“We followed the river from Ha’rar,” said Seladon, pulling back her hood. She watched as the wind rolling across the Plains bent the tall grasses toward the red-lit horizon, pulling long strands of her hair along with it. She felt Tavra scuttle around on her shoulder, trying to disentangle herself from the blowing strands. “The Forest is less dense by the river, so we could keep up a good pace.”

Mera eyed the Threader on Seladon’s shoulder, but left it unmentioned. “We have to hope that the Skeksis are still waiting at the pass,” she said, raising her voice as the wind picked up.

“Ethri said she would keep skekSa tied up as long as possible so that she couldn’t send a message to the others. If we presume that they’d wait at least a whole day for my sister and her friends to emerge, then we should still have a few hours at least.” 

Mera looked west, where the Dying Sun had just fallen below the horizon and the Rose Sun loomed not far above it. Seladon was well-versed in her job enough to recognize that the other maudra had something she wished to say, but was holding back.

“What is it, Maudra Mera? You can speak freely with me.”

“About a league south of here,” she began, her eyes still lingering in the direction of the setting suns, “there used to be a small village, part Spriton and part Podling. When the Gelfling evacuated, we offered to take the Podlings with us, but most decided to stay. They’re all dead now, or taken by the Skeksis. Every last one. Before he died, the last survivor described a dark creature, hard, with a shell, and glowing purple eyes.”

“The Garthim,” Seladon whispered. _How many do the Skeksis have?_ If SkekSa and her co-conspirators had taken one each, that meant at least four, including the one Naia had killed.

“There are Spriton villages and homesteads all across the Plains,” continued Mera, turning towards Seladon, away from the sunset, “and some refused to evacuate, or couldn't for one reason or another. Any one of them could be next.”

Seladon tightened her hands on the reins as the wind blew insistently on her fingers. “Then we should hurry and try to capture one of these creatures,” she said, “so we can come up with a plan to stop them.”

“And we should eliminate their masters while we’re at it,” said Mera. 

_Ah, there it is._ “Maudra Mera, we can’t kill the Skeksis.” 

“They slaughtered all of those Podlings, and took the rest off to the castle for who-knows-what. And they won’t stop there. They want Gelfling to drain and they won’t stop until they’ve drained us all. They’re becoming more and more desperate. The Skeksis will kill us all, every last creature of Thra, if we do not stop them.”

“But the urRu…”

“The urRu do nothing to stop it,” said Mera, the wind carrying her angry voice into Seladon’s ear. “They are complicit.”

Seladon sensed that she had reached another critical moment. Maudra Mera seemed so sure of herself. But Seladon had felt so sure of herself before, and she had been so wrong. Mera was older and more experienced, but then again Mother had been too, and she had been wrong about the Skeksis for a long time. _I wish Brea were here_ , Seladon surprised herself by thinking. She felt Tavra place a single spindly leg on her cheek, which by now Seladon had learned was her new way of trying to steady her.

“Maudra Mera," she said. "I understand your anger…”

“Do you?” The red light of Rose sundown shone on Mera’s face.

Seladon sat up taller in her saddle. “Do you think I have no grief to hold against the Skeksis?” she asked. “No anger? No shame?”

Mera settled back on the landstrider and turned her head again towards the horizon. “You bear no shame, All-Maudra. You tried to be a dam to hold back the flood, but the waters have burst through now and there’s only one way forward. That is all.”

“There’s the practical argument at least,” Seladon said softly after a moment of considering Mera’s point. “The killing spreads the blight.”

“Surely only one or two Skeksis will not change the course of the blight so very much. And yet it will give us an advantage.”

“It will also kill one or two innocent urRu. We do not know how the blight will respond to that.”

“And what about the creatures? These Garthim? We certainly have to kill those.”

“We don’t know what they are yet. And if killing them spreads the blight, we may have to stop killing them too. But we need to find out first. _That_ is our mission.” Seladon nodded curtly as she finished speaking, internally surprised that she had ended up at a place of confidence by the end of the conversation.

“Yes, All-Maudra,” said Mera, but she keep her eyes on the horizon. 

_Enough forays into ethical debate_ , thought Seladon. _Let’s get back to practical details._ “My sister wishes to speak to you, Maudra Mera, if you don’t mind.”

“As you wish.” Mera’s eyes went to the Threader on Seladon's shoulder, and she watched in mild curiosity wrapped itself around Seladon's neck and face. 

“Maudra Mera,” came Tavra’s voice from Seladon’s mouth. “You know this land better than anyone else. We need to trap the creature in some kind of a pit.”

“Then we should flush them towards the southwest,” Mera responded. She pointed with the wind, towards the low Rose Sun. “There’s a narrow gorge. It leads all the way to the sea, but it is not wide enough for the creature to pass through. We should be able to keep it trapped there.” 

“Do your soldiers know the land?” asked Tavra. 

“Every inch of it.”

“Then we’ll have the Vapran cavalry block off the path to the northeast while Spriton chase the creatures towards the gorge,” said Tavra. “The Vapra will follow, pushing the line southwest.”

Soon the forest of white threads, now doubled in size, wove its way through the tall grasses towards the light of the setting suns. Seladon, still connected to the Threader, gave control over to Tavra, by far the more experienced rider. As they neared their goal, one of Mera’s scouts waved them down from her position in a small copse of trees.

“There are two Skeksis and two of the creatures waiting here,” she said, indicating the position on Mera’s map. _Two. So that's five at least, including the dead one._

The forest of white legs, twenty-eight fours twice over, came hurdling towards two Skeksis and two Garthim, the beating of their feet against the earth blending with the sound of the harsh wind. Seladon watched as the Skeksis whipped their heads towards their direction, then mounted their armalig chariots in a panic. By the time the Skeksis had control of their chariots, the Vapran cavalry, led by Tavra and Seladon, had cut off the path to the northeast, with the Spriton positioning themselves between the Skeksis and the Vapran line. 

Rose Sun dusk fell as the twin lines of landstriders pressed on to the southwest, the Skeksis and Garthim driven before them. The gorge came into view as the last of the twilight faded into night’s black. Here where the land was flat, the First Sister already splashing across the rock from the horizon and reflecting off of the black armor of the Garthim as the Spriton and Vapran lines hedged them in. With no tall grasses to block it, the wind howled louder than ever, whipping Seladon’s hair and cloak in irregular waves. 

Backed against the edge of the gorge, the two Skeksis drew their swords. “Garthim!” shouted one, preparing to loose the creatures on the Gelfling, before Seladon cut him off.

“Put down your weapons and call off your creatures,” said Seladon from high upon her mount. “We are here to talk.”

“Gelfling need whole forest of cavalry to talk?” asked the other Skeksis, who Seladon recognized as the Chamberlin.

“Brave Gelfling,” began the other Skeksis, who she had never seen before. _This must be skekUng._ “You outnumber us by many. Surely you will defeat us this day, but we will not go down without a fight.”

“We have no need to defeat you,” said Seladon. “You and your colleague are free to go. Just leave the creatures.”

“You will not be able to control them,” said skekUng.

“You can let us worry about that.”

“What, you plan maybe to trap them in the gorge? That is clever.” He laughed, the haughty laugh of a Skeksis who still has a hand to play. “Garthim, into the gorge!”

With that, the two beasts scuttled off of the cliff into the gorge below. Their hard shells clanged against the rocks on their way down, but at the bottom they righted themselves and scurried about, seemingly unharmed. 

“There,” said skekUng. “You’ve got them where you want them.”

“And you’ll go?” asked Seladon.

“We’ll go. Let me just give the creatures a parting libation.” 

Before anyone could stop him, skekUng removed a bottle from beneath his cloak, uncorked the top, and poured a bright yellow liquid down into the gorge. Upon contact, the armored skin of the Garthim sizzled and melted, emitting a foul smoke that rose up the walls of the gorge and spread in a heavy fog among the stalky legs of the landstriders.

When the fog cleared, nothing remained at the bottom of the gorge but two black stains upon the rocky floor. The Garthim had uttered no shriek, made no protest as they disintegrated into nothingness. 

“You will not understand them, even if you capture one. They are creatures of allegiance to the Skeksis only. It is built into their very being. They exist for our pleasure alone.”

“And yet you so easily destroy two precious specimens?” asked Mera, no doubt thinking of the landstrider herds she had tended her entire life. 

“Ha, you think that two of these creatures represent any significant proportion of the might of the Skeksis? Our Scientist began with only one, of course, and from that one he created five, and then ten more, and then twenty and then fifty. In less than a month, we have an entire army of creatures, all under my command.” 

_Not five. An entire army of them_ , thought Seladon. She felt Tavra’s shock mirror hers within their shared mind.

A flash of movement to Seladon’s left, and Mera went charging towards the Skeksis on her landstrider. SkekUng smiled, and, with a gesture to his companion, hopped down the cliffside to a ledge below, then another, before reaching the valley floor. Mera failed to slow her pace, spreading her wings in preparation leap off the landstrider and fly down after them, when Seladon called out.

“Maudra Mera, it’s over. Let them go.”

“I can take them out," she said.

“No, we can’t kill them.”

“It is worth risking the blight, your highness. Our attempt to heal the Crystal has failed. The Skeksis have an army and it’s growing fast. If we don’t pick them off one by one while we have the chance…”

“We still have one more thread to follow.”

“The visions from Stone-in-the-Wood. All-Maudra…”

“We will follow this final thread until its end. And if we have still not solved our problem by then…”

“Then it’s kill or be killed,” said Mera, barely disguising the anger in her voice as she rode off to round up her soldiers.

Seladon sat atop the landstrider, bathed in silver moonlight, wishing she could melt into it. At least the wind had finally settled down.

 _It doesn’t sit well with me_ , said Tavra through their link. _The death of innocents, even for the good of the many._

_It’s not a decision I want to make_ , Seladon replied. She watched Mera moving about her troops, giving orders, checking if any were hurt. Seladon couldn’t hear their words, but she could tell from the looks on their faces that most of the soldiers were of Mera’s opinion regarding the Skeksis. She thought of a village littered with dead Podlings, and the cage full of Gelfling that she had been kept in at the castle. _But I may have to._

******

Deep within the swamp, under the dense apewood canopy, it was difficult to tell which suns were overhead. Kylan had first come to Great Smerth over seven trine ago, when Naia had insisted to her mother that Maudra Mera bring him along on one of her rare trips to the swamp. When he grew older he had begun to visit on his own, two or three times a trine, but he still hadn’t quite figured out how to read the time of day through the ceiling of branches and vines above. The green-mottled light spilling down through the leaves suggested that at least one sun had been up for a few hours.

His usual quarters at Great Smerth consisted of a small bedroom and a simple sitting room, but the latter opened up onto a curved balcony where he sat now, idly writing down notes about their journey, occasionally becoming distracted by the patterns in the grain of the smooth, worn apewood of the balcony rail where his right arm rested. Brea still slept in the bedroom, which, knowing her, she would probably continue doing for at least another hour. 

The quiet peace of the morning was broken by a firm knock at the door. Kylan, startled out of his concentration, stumbled over to open it. He had expected maybe Naia or Gurjin or one of their other friends. He had not, in any corner of his mind, expected Maudra Mera.

“Oh, hello,” she said, equally surprised to see him. 

“Hello,” he replied. He had no idea what to say. “You’re back.” 

“Yes,” she said, looking down the hallway towards the next door. “I’m sorry, I was just looking for Princess Brea, but it seems I have the wrong…”

 _Something must have happened to her sister._ Brea had been operating on a thin level of anxiety for the last two days, waiting for news. He gestured toward the bedroom door. “Is it urgent? Should I wake her up?”

Maudra Mera froze her face, like she always did when she didn’t know what to say. Eventually she raised her left hand to display an envelope with a seal of gray wax. “I have a letter from her sister. I can just leave it.”

He reached out for the letter, which Maudra Mera handed to him after another moment’s hesitation. “Is she all right?” he asked.

“Who?”

“All-Maudra Seladon?”

“Yes, no one was hurt.”

“Good,” he said, looking down at the letter.

“Well,” she said. “I’ll be going.” She turned and headed back down the hall.

He was about to close the door on the entire awkward conversation when an idea that had been floating around in the back of his mind suddenly surfaced. “Maudra Mera?” he called after her. She paused and turned to face him. “Do you still have it with you?”

“You’re always so vague and imprecise with your questions,” she replied with a sigh, turning back into her normal self. “But somehow I’ve learned how to decode you. Yes, I still have it.”

“I know I gave it to you, but can I have it back?”

“That’s an odd way of describing that entire episode, but yes. I’ll go get it.”

When Brea woke up a few minutes after Maudra Mera had left the second time, he was back on balcony, already working on his new project.

“How do you feel?” he asked as she walked over the basin in the corner of the sitting room and groggily splashed some water onto her face.

“Hot,” she said, twisting her hair up off of her neck and looking around for something to tie it up with. “It’s very hot here. Is there any news?”

“Maudra Mera is back already. No casualties. Your sister sent a letter,” he said, nodding toward the table where he had left it.

“Oh, thank Thra, Seladon is safe,” she said. She forgot about her hair and let it fall back down again as she plopped down at the table. She hastily tore open the letter. “It says here that they failed to capture…” she trailed off as she looked up at him. “I’m sorry, is that the Hunter’s mask?”

“Yes. Maudra Mera still had it.”

“You know, sometimes you only give the least relevant piece of information.”

“I thought I’d carve a firca out of it.”

“And why is that?” Her look was curious, but he could see discomfort mixed in with it. He remembered the flashes of the mask in her memories, from when she had been captured by the Hunter in the Crystal Sea. 

“It was a creature of Thra once,” he said. “The Hunter used its skull, without its permission I assume, for all of those years in order to strike terror in others. So I thought it might be nice to turn it into something more peaceful instead.”

Brea’s expression softened into a smile. “I think that’s a very good idea.” She turned her attention back to the letter, and he returned to his task.

With each flick of the knife, he had a flash of his own memories of the Hunter's mask, a hundred different fractions of the worst experience of his life. But instead of ignoring the flashes like he usually did, he let them come, let them lead his thoughts along different paths, to new places that he was certain were not memories at all, until he found himself walking down a dusty old road through a brown and withered plain, through an empty Skarith Land. Here and there crawlies scuttled amongst scarce scrubby plants, and in the distance, creatures like emaciated bats appeared as crooked black lines against a yellow sky. Nothing else lived. 

“Seladon says she’s going back to Ha’rar to meet up with Maudra Seethi. Seethi has been organizing the Gelfling for the ritual at the northern hearths. They’ll contact us here about the other… Are you all right?” Brea’s words had entered his mind and found him on the barren plain, stirring him out of the vision. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I’m just thinking,” he replied, not looking up. 

“Well, whatever you’re thinking about, from the look on your face, it must be horrifying.” 

He tried to imagine where their line of conversation might go and calculated that it would probably be somewhere more emotionally upsetting than she needed right now. She had been up half the night worrying about her sister, and she had the ritual to help orchestrate, which required organizing countless small details. _She's too busy to deal with whatever it was that just happened to me._

“I’m fine,” he said. He turned his focus back on his task.

Brea plopped down on the balcony next to him, the green-mottled light falling on her silver hair. “Don’t do this,” she said.

“Don’t do what?"

“The _I’m fine_ thing.” 

He focused his gaze on the skull in his lap, now half-transformed, but the corner of his eye caught the mismatched stitching on her patched dress, the neat row of stitches where he had shown her how to sew it, and three loopy, uneven sides where she had insisted on finishing it herself. Beneath the patch, he knew, was a whitish scar in the shape of the crystal shard. 

“I was just thinking about how my parents are still dead,” he said. Maybe they could leave it at that.

“If carving the mask is bringing all that back, maybe you should wait. If…”

“No, that’s not it,” he replied, still staring down at the skull. He struggled to explain. His mind had made the leaps from the skull mask to the barren plain on its own; it was difficult now to remember all the steps it had taken to get there. “My parents are still dead. The Hunter killed them, and now he’s dead too, but they’re not back, and the Archer is dead as well, and it’s all just more dead people. Nothing is fixed.”

“At least the Hunter can’t hurt anyone else anymore.”

“I know. It was a powerful choice on the part or urVa, to let himself die so that others might live. And _that_ is what I'm thinking about, I guess. Whether I could ever make a choice like that.” He put down the knife on the ancient worn wood of the bench beside him, but kept the half-carved skull in his hands. “What if our choice is to kill the Skeksis and the urRu, or let ourselves be killed?”

“We’re not there yet,” said Brea softly. “Hopefully we’ll never be.”

“I know,” he said, his vision of the barren plain skirting the edges of his mind. “But I still want to know what my answer would be. When we were fighting the Skeksis in Stone-in-the-Wood, it really hit home how the whole point was to just… break their bodies until they don’t work anymore. I know we have limited choices, and we have to protect ourselves and each other, but I don’t think I can kill them. I don’t think I can kill anyone. I want to find a better way.” _A barren Thra, nothing but rock and dust, nearly empty of life._ “Or die trying, I guess.” 

Brea sighed and shifted her gaze to the skull in his lap, looking more through it than at it. He could tell that she was pulling several different thoughts together, trying to solve an intractable philosophical problem with aggressive rationalization. He set aside the skull and took her hand. “You’re busy, Brea. Let’s not talk about it…” 

“First of all,” she began, tightening her grip on his hand, “we’re fairly certain we can’t kill sentient beings without spreading the blight. So we need to minimize killing anyway. And second of all, we know that there _is_ a better way. To heal the Crystal and send the urSkeks back home. And we know how to do it, or at least we know how to find out how to do it.” She released his hand, shifting her position to lean into him instead, and turned her face up towards the deep green canopy. “So everything will be fine.”

The sunlit branches creaked high above them, ever-shifting in the morning breeze, while the scent of waters rich with plant life drifted up from below. Brea’s arms were wrapped warmly around him, and the two of them breathed together on a bench sculpted out of a living tree. It should have been easy, in such a moment, to agree with her that everything would be fine. But the image of a lifeless Thra drifted into his mind again, and he found his next words coming out of his mouth despite himself. “What if it’s not?”

She tensed. He knew she wouldn’t like the next part, but she appreciated honesty, so he decided to be honest. “What if the plan doesn’t work, or the instructions we get from the ritual aren’t what we expect?” he said. “What if the only thing left to do is kill the Skeksis and the urRu with them, or let the Gelfling be killed? What choice do we make?”

“Well, then,” she said turning to face him after a pause, “it’s like you said. We find another way, _another_ another way, or we die trying.”

“You don’t have to agree with me,” he said, leaning his forehead against hers.

“I do agree, in this case,” she said. “In this very specific, very hypothetical case, which is not going to happen, because we’re going to discover how to heal the Crystal and send the urSkeks home.” She kissed him once and held up the letter. “In five days. Seladon says that’s the timeframe we’re aiming for.” She stood and headed back into the sitting room. 

“I have to go talk to Maudra Laesid, and Rian, too. The Stonewood want him to lead the group to Stone-in-the-Wood, which is fine of course.” She put the letter in her pocket and started towards the door.

“It’s your choice completely,” he said, picking up the skull again, “but are you going to maybe brush your hair first?”

Brea put a hand to her head and found a half-unraveled braid. 

“Yes,” she said. She looked down at her disheveled clothes. “And also change out of the dress that I slept in. And then I’ll leave you in peace to finish.” She went back into the bedroom to rummage around for her hairbrush.

Kylan smiled, and then went back to work on the skull while Brea whirled around the room getting ready, her movement in the background grounding him, keeping his mind from wandering too far from the current moment. When she left, however, he found himself alone again, sitting half in the green-mottled light on the balcony in Great Smerth, and half in the dusty brown wasteland of a Thra that might be.

******

Gurjin woke as he did every morning since his escape from the Skeksis, after a brief period at the end of his slumber when he was aware of nothing but his own non-existence, and also dread. He opened his eyes, blinking as he focused on the rays of light, yellow and red, filtering through the canopy across the lofty ceiling of his childhood bedroom. As he focused on the light, memories of his whole life came drifting back into his mind until he melted back into existence. The dread remained.

Breakfast. He needed breakfast. 

On his way the Great Hall, he turned a corner and bumped into a woman of impressive height. It took a few more seconds than it should have for him to realize that she was his sister.

“Did you just wake up?” asked Eliona. “The Great Sun’s already over the canopy.” In anyone else it would have sounded judgmental, but she was still her same old straightforward, sincere self, even if she was about a foot and a half taller than when he had first left for the castle. From both her tone and her face, he could tell she was worried about him, and also worried about worrying him by acting worried. 

“Yeah," he said. “I’m starving.” _Try to keep things light._

“Mom and Dad and Pemma are still eating breakfast in Mom’s work room. If you hurry, there should be something left.”

“What about you?”

“I ate hours ago. Some of us have to get up at Great Sun dawn in order to supervise breakfast preparations in the Great Hall. For three times as many people as usual.”

“You work too hard.” 

“It’s a good distraction,” she said. “From everything that’s happening. Sometimes I pretend that we’re having a big festival and the Spriton and half the Stonewood and some Grottan and Podlings are all invited for some reason and we’re all having a wonderful time.” Gurjin himself would have wrapped the statement in sarcasm, but that wasn’t her way, and by the end of it, her voice cracked and a tear escaped her eye. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. 

“You’re doing a good job,” he said. Still in their embrace, he put a hand on top of his head and then moved it forward to hover over hers. About half an inch clearance. “And the most important thing,” he said, “is that I am still the tallest person in the family.”

She laughed in his arms before straightening up and wiping her eyes. “Well. Time to go check in with the Stonewood Elders. I’ll see you at dinner I hope.”

On his way to his mother’s rooms he passed twice as many people as usual. The Stonewood and Grottan tended to be subdued, and the Drenchen were rather harried given their extra hosting duties, but the Spriton seemed restless. An entire clan displaced, and a swamp was far from ideal for farmers, and even less so for the landstrider cavalry. 

“Good morning buddy,” said his father from the table as Gurjin entered his mother’s work room. “Although I suppose you’re too old for me to call you that.”

“You can always call me buddy, Dad.” Gurjin patted his father on the shoulder, sat down next to him and grabbed an eel roll from the remains of breakfast on the table. _Keep it light._

“You seem tired,” said Pemma with a grin. “Anything to do with that sailor who snuck into your room last night?” 

“We’re adults,” he replied. “We don't sneak. Also, since when do you know about sneaking into other people’s rooms?” He realized at that moment that she had just turned fifteen, the same age he had been when he had first left for the castle. There had been a lot of sneaking into other people’s rooms at the castle.

"Dare I ask if it's serious?" asked his mother.

“Of course it's not serious.” Thank Thra that the Sifa were just as casual about things as the guard had been at the castle. Unlike apparently all of his other friends, he was not anywhere near the mental space for serious. _Time to shift the topic of conversation away from my personal life._ “Since we're apparently having a family discussion on this subject, why don't we talk about how Naia’s literally in bed right now with that Grottan boy she picked up?”

His mother choked on her tea a little bit. “Is _that_ serious?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She considered the situation. “He’s cute,” she said after a minute.

“He does seem to be the right temperament for her,” said his father.

“Yes, Naia was never going to be the laid-back one in the relationship,” his mother said. “She takes too much after you.”

“Do you honestly think _you're_ the laid-back one in this relationship?”

"Of course I am,” she responded. “How is that not obvious after thirty trine?“

Gurjin’s thoughts drifted. His father was right. Not about being laid-back, but about Amri being a good match for Naia, personality-wise. They had explored a labyrinth of caves together, fought a Garthim together, found the song of the Crystal together. There was no reason to disapprove. And yet Gurjin still had to keep himself from glowering whenever he saw him, and had taken to avoiding him all together. Gurjin's mind was circling around a thought, something that would come to him if he could put enough strands together, but he was still tired, and there was still that existential dread lurking around in his mind, and of course his concentration was completely thrown by his parents’ continued bantering.

“For the love of Thra," he said. "Neither of you is the laid-back one.” 

“Although neither of them is as _not_ laid-back as Naia,” said Pemma. 

“And when did you get so wise?” he asked her.

In response, she sipped her tea and unfurled her wings, beating them once casually.

“And she’s _sassy_. Mom, she’s sassy now. You need to straighten her out.” 

“Pemma, don’t you think it’s time you get going if you’re going to be in the eastern reach before twilight?” their mother asked.

“What’s she doing in the eastern reach?”

“ _I_ ,” said Pemma, “am leading the hunt. Because I am very grown-up.” She slung her arms casually around her brother’s shoulders and kissed him once on the forehead. He caught the concern in her eyes before she could hide it, and he realized for the first time, as she bounced out of the door, how much he and his youngest sister were alike.

“Why is she leading the hunt instead of you?” he asked his father.

“Nalon is leading the hunt,” his father replied. “He's letting her have command to see how she does, but ultimate authority is with him. She’s got to take over for me someday, and if I go with them it will moot the point.”

“ _I_ could lead a hunt," Gurjin said. “I’m available. I got fired from my old job, you know.” _Oh Thra, I was supposed to keep it light. Why did I bring up my old job?_ But as he saw the glance that passed between his parents, he realized that it was too late to avoid the subject.

“As much as I enjoy teasing you about your escapades with Sifan wenches…” his father began.

"She's Maudra Ethri’s second-in-command.”

“I meant _wench_ in a positive way,” his father continued. “Anyway, I don’t think that’s why you're tired.”

“I’m not going to get out of this conversation, am I?” Gurjin asked. "What if I bring up Naia’s new boyfriend again?”

“We’re just concerned for your well-being,” his mother said.

 _Ugh, concern for my well-being._ Might as well just get it over with then. “I sleep enough, time-wise," he said. “But no matter how long I sleep, I’m still tired when I wake up. It usually gets better as the day goes on. Mostly. Not all the way.”

“But you healed Rian’s leg,” his mother said. “Naia told me.”

“Yeah, uh, very slowly. What does that have to do with anything?”

“It means you still have enough. Whatever they drained you of, if you still have enough essence in you to heal bone, they must not have gotten much.”

“Mom…”

“We always use up some of our essence when we heal, but after a short time it comes back. So if it just went into the Crystal and not…”

“ _Mom._ I don’t want to talk about it.” His voice was a little too loud when he cut her off.

“I know. I’m sorry,” she said. She reached for her cane and pulled herself up from the table. “Anyway, Mera’s back and I have to go meet with her and Brea.” Gurjin felt guilty for raising his voice, and took her hand as she passed. She squeezed it once and gave him a smile before heading out the door.

“She just wants to fix it,” his father said once they were alone. “She’s used to being able to fix people.”

“I know.”

“I wish _I_ could fix it. Whatever it is.”

“I don’t even know what what’s wrong with me,” Gurjin said. “I have this constant empty feeling, and I don't know if it’s because they’ve really taken something away from me, or if it’s just fear that it will happen again. I just wish… 

_I wish I knew that I would never be drained again. Or I wish I knew that I could face it without fear. Or I wish…_ “I wish the Skeksis would just go away.”

“Well, I think that’s something we can all understand,” his father said. “Even if no one else can understand exactly what you’ve been through.”

Gurjin's thoughts finally circled together, to the day in the Valley of the Standing Stones, when he’d shown urSu what it meant for a Gelfling to be drained. There _was_ someone who understood what he’d been through. _Amri was drained too. And that's why I want nothing to do with him._

It didn’t really make any sense. It certainly wasn't fair to Amri. And he wanted Naia to be happy. He would have to get over it somehow. _Once the Skeksis go away_ , he thought. _Just a few more days until the ritual. And then everything will be fine._

******

Three suns chased each other across a midday sky, but their tracks were separate, and there was no way they would ever catch up with each other, at least not any time soon. All three beat down on the old wood of the rickety ship where skekSa sat, waiting for skekUng’s visit. He would no doubt whine endlessly about their failed mission to capture the Gelfling, and she would rather not have to see him at all, except that she needed him to collect the Garthim that still occupied the cabin. She had said the words to deactivate it, and it had obeyed, but the creature was a strange abomination, and she had a lingering feeling that it might wake up of its own accord and start wreaking havoc at any second.

And so skekSa was filled with both irritation and relief when skekUng appeared on the old splintering dock and climbed carefully aboard, clearly unused to travel by ship. She sat silently on her bench and waited for him speak first.

“It seems,” he began, “that the Gelfling knew about our plan.”

“Seems so,” she responded.

“The Emperor was most displeased with our failure. He grows agitated without the Gelfling essence.”

“I don’t care what the Emperor is pleased or displeased with.”

SkekUng didn’t respond immediately, instead squinting out into the overwhelming light of three midday suns upon the sea. She could tell that something else was preoccupying him, more so than their failed plan, thank the stars. 

“They started draining Podlings,” he said at last.

 _So the Emperor is not merely agitated. He’s desperate._ “That’s new,” skekSa said. “Did it work?”

“Not the same as with the Gelfling. But it still produces essence. Apparently it is less invigorating but still effective.”

“Ha. Drinking essence of Podling. Surely stout Skeksis like you and I will never need to resort to such debasement.”

“I pray the day never comes where I need the essence,” skekUng said, turning his face away from the sea. “And yet it may. It does have some sort of restorative power. Even with the Podling essence, I saw our compatriots transformed, revived, before my eyes.”

“You’re spending too much time at the castle.”

“One might say that you spend too much time with the Gelfling.”

“Without me, you’d have no information.”

“Like your last bit of information?” he asked in a sour tone. 

_Ah, I walked right back into that trap._

“I doubt that it was mere luck that Maudra Ethri ran into you while you were about to catch the Gelfling,” he continued, “and that the Spriton and Vapran maudras happened to be strolling by the mouth of Mystic Valley with a forest of landstriders while the Chamberlain and I were there.”

“Up by Cera-Na, my island was swarming with Gelfling day in and day out,” she said. “Someone must have heard me speaking with skekZok. Or maybe it was that bore urSan. She’s very sneaky.”

“Or maybe it was skekSa.”

She had expected him to scold her for not showing enough caution about spies, but this accusation threw her. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why would I give you all of that information if I was just going to let them escape?”

“Perhaps you set a trap so that the Vapran and Spriton cavalry could capture a Garthim.”

Given the turn of events, it was a reasonable suspicion. _I was right about him being competent. Even if he’s wrong in this case._ She did her best to keep her face from betraying any hint of admiration and continued in her same irritated tone. “Why would I care about helping a bunch of Spriton and Vapra? I think I’ve only ever even seen a Spriton once. Besides, if I wanted to give the Gelfling a Garthim to study, I could have just given Ethri this one,” she said, pointing a casual finger at the cabin. “Which, by the way, is what you are here for, is it not? I pray you remove it at once. Its presence disturbs me greatly. And I had to take down an entire cabin wall to accommodate the cursed thing.” 

SkekUng glanced through the cabin window at the deactivated Garthim. But instead of entering the cabin, he drew close to skekSa, a hand on his sword. “You know if the Emperor is displeased with you, he still has resources. He can find ways to punish you, even if you are away from the castle.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s wise advice from a friend.”

“Well, if you’d like give it one more try, as a _friend_ , I have more information for you. I know what the Gelfling are going to do next. As I drew close to them on the sea, they performed some sort of ritual and dream-etched this map.” She reached into a satchel at the foot of the bench, withdrew a scroll, and offered it to him.

He considered it for a moment in her outstretched hand before grabbing it and unrolling it. “These are the seven hearths,” he said, after a moment’s examination.

“There’s some sort of ritual that they need to do,” she said. “Some kind of ritual that will activate the Crystal of Truth.”

“Activate the Crystal? How do you know that?”

“Because when they etched this map, they nearly set a princess on fire. She was holding the crystal shard and whatever they did in their dreamfast, it activated the shard somehow, set it aflame from within.”

“So this crystal symbol here at Stone-in-the-Wood…”

“That’s the key. Stone-in-the-Wood will be the most important site for the ritual. That’s where they’ll have the shard, and you can bet most of their leaders will be there.”

“So we patrol Stone-in-the-Wood and we have our chance,” he said. “And what of the spy who discovered your first plan?”

“I have been alone in this cove since I made this drawing, and I have told no one except you. The Sifa abandoned this place over a hundred trine ago.”

SkekUng rolled up the scroll and placed it in a pocket within his robes. “I will take it to the castle. We will pray that this new information placates the Emperor.” 

SkekSa watched with distaste, but did not get up, as he shouted a command to the Garthim and led it across the aging dock to the shore. They disappeared into the rocky hills that lined the coast, and then she was blessedly alone again.

She sat wearily on the bench, its old wood as sagging and splintery as she felt. She tried to imagine decaying further and further until she crumbled into dust. Would she face that fate with courage, or would she give in to fear and go scrambling to the castle to get her hands on some Gelfling essence? Her compatriots at the castle did truly disgust her with their desperation. But would she herself be brave enough not to cave in the end? 

She was lost in her thoughts but not so much so that she didn’t hear the splash and heavy thud on the deck beside her. “It wasn’t me,” said a familiar voice. It had been maybe fifty trine since skekSa had heard it last, but it still made her cringe. 

“What do you want?” she asked, not bothering to open her eyes.

“It wasn’t me who told the Gelfling about your plan.”

“Is that why you’re here? To clear your name?”

“No,” said urSan. “That’s not why I’m here.”

SkekSa waited for urSan to continue, forgetting that the blasted urRu took eons to get to the point. “Just get on with it,” she said, opening her eyes, “and then leave me in peace.”

“It’s almost time,” urSan said simply.

“Cryptic as usual.” _Eons to finish a thought and then the thought turns out to be a useless vagary._ “Time for what?”

“To go home.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” SkekSa looked down at her great blue overcoat in an attempt to avoid eye contact with her other half. Her gaze fell upon a spot of dirt and she began to scrape at it. _I just cleaned this_ , she thought.

“We shouldn’t be part of this,” urSan said. “This draining of the Gelfling. It is the dark part of wisdom.”

“I’m not part of it,” skekSa said, licking her finger and trying to rub out the dirt spot. “I’m doing this to _save_ Gelfling.”

“Some. Not enough. And not for the right reasons. Death spreads the blight. On this planet and in our hearts and minds. And a blighted heart cannot return home.”

The dirt was caked on thickly, and no matter what she did she somehow ended up just spreading it around more. And that urSan was still droning on about blight and hearts and home. “I don’t care about those things,” she said. “Trouble me no more.”

UrSan reached out a single hand and slowly, patiently brushed at the dirt on skekSa’s coat until it was gone. “I will leave for now,” she said. “But we will see each other again soon.”

The Lord Mariner closed her eyes and waited until she heard the splash of the Swimmer plunging back into the sea. She then opened them again and stared up mindlessly at the cloudless sky. It was not until long after urSan had left that she realized that her other half might very well have heard about their plans to interrupt the ritual at Stone-in-the-Wood. 

_Oh she is very sneaky, that one._ SkekSa could have gone after her, or gone after skekUng to warn him. But, for some unknown reason, beneath this alien sky with its alien suns, atop the gentle waves of an alien sea, she decided, simply, to do nothing.

******

The suns and moons and stars passed through the sky in succession, but Raunip was too weary to note them as he rested on Lore's back on their journey through the mountains. He was weak, and the Darkening within him continued to roil with a strength he had perhaps not expected when he agreed to take it from the Gelfling girl in the wasteland. He required the good counsel of trees, and while the Wellspring Tree had already perished, he had heard rumors that a single Waystar tree still shone. And so after their meeting with Maudra Seethi, Raunip had parted with skekGra and urGoh, leaving them to meditate in their desert home for perhaps the final time, while he himself headed off for Kira-Staba, the Waystar Grove high in the mountains that lined the Silver Sea.

The smooth stone of Lore's back grew colder as they climbed higher into the mountains, the vibrations through Lore's stony body altering slightly as the ground beneath them transitioned from sand to stone to snow. Raunip slept through much of the journey, until at last he woke to find himself and Lore standing high above the Silver Sea, the pale light of dawn complemented by the light of a single shining tree, slender against the blue-gray sky.

He placed his gnarled hand upon the tree's smooth light gray bark, and closed his eyes. It took him longer than expected to find her consciousness, and he realized that although her light still shone faintly against the dawn, it might very well fade before dusk.

 _Hello, dear child of Mother Aughra and the stars._ Her voice in his mind was a mere scratch upon a whisper. _I see you bear something of the late Vliste-Staba within you, something that I thought had been given to a Gelfling._

_The Gelfling girl became overwhelmed. I could not bear to watch her suffer._

_And so you took it from her. Even though you are not much farther from death than I._

_I thought... I thought perhaps that if this Darkened energy were within me when I died, that it would die with me, instead of blighting Thra further…_

_And so it shall_ , spoke Kira-Staba in their joint minds, _if it is still within you when you die. If part of you returns to Thra, and part to the stars, some of the energy will be born away from Thra, to dissipate into the heavens._

That meant he couldn't ask Kira-Staba to take it from him now. If she held the Darkening when she died, it would simply return to Thra and poison the land, the water, the rocks. _But what I hold now is only a small part of the Darkened energy spreading throughout our world_ , Raunip said in their joint minds. _Perhaps it won't make that much of a difference whether I let it die with me or not._

_It may mean an extra trine or two of successful crops, or another seven trine for Smerth-Staba to safely hold the horde of refugees that flood to him. It is up to you whether that makes much of a difference._

_Of course it does_ , he thought. But he and skekGra and urGoh had plans, and those plans involved him connecting his two friends to dreamspace. When they had done so during the ritual with Maudra Seethi, the Darkened power inside of him had flashed wildly, unexpectedly, a bolt of violet lightning into the sea of dreamspace.

 _I feel your doubts_ , said Kira-Staba, _and you are right to have them. Your plan for your friends will not succeed if you have so much of the Darkening within you. The heart of the urSkek must not become blemished again._

Raunip winced at the memory of the taunts he had leveled at GraGoh all those years ago, leveled at a heart imperfect but not irredeemable. But if he was to make up for his own imperfect behavior, he needed to ensure the success of the plan that the three of them had crafted together over all these long trine. _Perhaps someone else can do my part in my place_.

_You know that you are the only creature on Thra who can connect a Skeksis and an urRu to dreamspace._

_Then what can I do with this Darkening?_ he asked in frustration. Even within the mental space they shared, he felt his physical body tense, as if it were trapped in a cage with no hope of escape. _I cannot give it to you to hold, if it will just end up spreading the blight._

_I think you know the answer. You must ask the Gelfling girl to bear it again, until your plan for your friends has come to fruition._

His mind jumped back to the wasteland, to the frightened young Gelfling. _No. I took this burden from her and…_

_…and so she is the only one who can freely consent to bear it, because she is the only one who understands the consequences. She is in the swamps now. I will ask Smerth-Staba to ask it of her._

_Maybe… maybe it won't matter_ , said Raunip. _We need the Gelfling to figure out how to activate the shard before we can complete our plan, and maybe they won't do it in time, before I..._

 _I thought you knew_ , said Kira-Staba with kindness in her dying voice. _Your countless trine of effort have paid off, dear child. The Gelfling have found the song that bridges the urSkek world and ours. Even now the clan-mothers prepare for rituals at each of the seven hearths, with the shard at Stone-in-the-Wood. They will play the song for the Crystal and hear its response. In five days._

 _Five days?_ The Gelfling were moving quickly, more quickly than Raunip had expected. Surely he would last another five days.

_If the Gelfling girl consents, she will bear the Darkening for only a short time, among friends. Then you can take it from her again._

_And then?_

_And then, it will be over._

_Over._ With all of his forward momentum since he had come back to the surface, with all of the excitement of hundreds of trine of preparation coming to fruition, he had been prepared to move forward into his oblivion. But upon hearing it laid out so plainly by the last of the Waystar Trees, a crinkle of sorrow folded into his heart and threatened to trigger the Darkened energy within him. He cleared his mind and calmed himself.

_I cannot ask it of her, Kira-Staba._

_Forgive me, dear one. But this hearth-tree deems your plan for your urSkek friend to be a wise one. I have already sent the message to Smerth-Staba to relay to the girl. The choice is hers now. Be well, Raunip, son of Aughra._

_No, tell Smerth-Staba that I’ve changed my mind. He musn’t…_

Mid-phrase, he found himself back in the waking world, standing barefoot on the frozen ground by the Waystar Grove, the last light of Kira-Staba gone dim. He fell to his knees, the cold earth a part of Thra and therefore of no discomfort to him, and placed his hands on her smooth bark. There he shed tears for the wise creatures of Thra—for the Great Trees, for the Gruenaks, for the Arathim, for all the Podlings and Gelfling who had been killed or worse. And he shed tears for the speechless creatures as well, countless of which had become possessed by the Darkening and driven to death. 

The next five days passed with the suns and the moons and the stars moving through their usual arcs, but the individual moments that filled each day felt oddly timeless, as if this final span of days allotted to him had been magnified and stretched out. He kept one eye closed and another on the wide sky, watching it shift from morning to day to dusk, as Lore began the trek down from the mountains, treading snow, rock, sand, until they reached the Circle of the Suns. Raunip joined the Heretic and the Wanderer in what might be the final meal in their long-time home, before the four of them set off again for Stone-in-the-Wood.

Raunip remembered the ancient Stonewood capital from when it had still been a mere pile of rocks in the middle of the Endless Forest. As he rode through it now, silent and empty in the early afternoon sunlight, he wondered if he was also to witness to its return into wilderness, should the ritual fail and the Gelfling flee to less vulnerable corners of the world. 

Nestled here in the Endless Forest, where so much was root and branch and leaf, like him, Raunip watched as the landstriders arrive from the south, led by a young Stonewood. The soldiers set up a perimeter, while a handful of young Gelfling, including two of the three he had met in the wasteland, began organizing the space around the hearth for the upcoming ritual. And there, coming into view with an armful of brushwood for the fires, came the young Grottan girl, Deet.

Raunip been preparing for this day for countless trine. As Thra faced an unprecedented danger, as he faced his last chance to change the history of their world for the better, not to mention save some dear friends, he balked. When he had found Deet in the wasteland, she had been so hurt and so frightened. He knew Kira-Staba had deemed his plans wise, but here in this moment, he decided to disregard the wise counsel of trees. He could not poison this innocent Gelfling, even if it was only for a little while. 

And so Raunip shrank back into the forest, gnarled foot over gnarled roots, spindly arms twisted through spindly branches, retreating into a grove of low bushes and brush, folding in on himself, freezing in place, uncertain of what to do next.

He did not expect the sudden scraping noise, metal on metal, which he recognized from many years ago as the sound of a sword being pulled from a scabbard. He remained folded, and turned his head to see the young Stonewood who had led the group from the south, brandishing his sword, but cautiously, with a look of curiosity on his face.

“Hello,” said Raunip. 

The Stonewood stood silent for a moment and Raunip watched the thoughts pass behind his eyes, memories connecting to memories connecting to the now. 

“You’re the one Deet met in the wasteland,” the Stonewood said at last. “She’s been looking for you.”

“I cannot see her now,” said Raunip.

“But she showed me the message from Smerth-Staba. She must take the Darkening back or the ritual won’t work.”

“The ritual will work,” said Raunip. “ _Your_ ritual will work. It is only our interloping that would cause a problem. We shall not interlope.”

“Who’s _we_?”

Raunip was silent. He watched the thoughts swim behind the young Stonewood’s face again. He thought about how, wherever he was going after this life, to nothingness or something other, he would miss watching for hints of minds on the faces of wise creatures. 

“Deet saw the Heretic and the Wanderer in her vision from the Great Smerth,” the Stonewood said. “She said you told her before that the three of you are working together. You’re… you’re going to try to send them home, aren’t you?”

“SkekGra and urGoh and I have discussed the unexpected glitch in our plan,” said Raunip, “and they understand that we may not be able to go through with it. The Gelfling ritual _must_ go on. That was always the priority. I cannot ask her to take up this burden again.”

“Well, she has already been asked on your behalf and she accepted.”

“I…”

“She made her choice. It’s not your place to make it for her.” He smiled and held out his hand. Raunip hesitated.

“What’s your name?” he asked, looking at the Stonewood’s offered hand.

“Rian.”

“Did you grow up here?”

“Here and in the castle. My father was captain of the guards.”

“So you’ve lost the only two homes that you’ve ever known.”

Rian shrugged. “The only way I can ever come back to Stone-in-the-Wood is if we send the urSkeks home. If you prove now that you can send _one_ urSkek home…”

“…then there’s hope that you can send the rest one day.”

“We need that hope,” said Rian. 

Raunip unwound his arm, joined hands with the Stonewood, and let himself be led back towards the hearth. He hid behind the overgrowth while Rian called out to Deet. She left her friends and joined them.

“Brother Raunip,” she said, upon seeing him. “You’re here. The Great Smerth told me that you need me to take the Darkening, so you can save the Heretic and the Wanderer.”

“Your Gelfling ritual can be completed without our part,” said Raunip. “It’s not necessary…”

“I want to help them,” she said simply. “I want to help all of you.”

He could see in her the innocent Gelfling from thousands of trine ago, who had to be taught the meaning of death. But she was less naive, more wise, and her choice to bear this burden to save her friends held all the more weight. 

Deet threw her arms around Rian, and he held her close. _Ah, this story I have seen thousands of times._ It was a sweet story, if not one he would ever experience firsthand.

Deet raised her left hand, and Raunip raised his to join hers, and in the endless green of the forest, the Darkening flowed from one creature of Thra to the other. When Deet opened her eyes, a violet light shone through them, but the Darkening did not pulse through her veins with the rage it had before. 

“If you stay calm,” said Raunip. “I think it will mostly leave you alone. But you should go somewhere safe and out of the way until this is all done.”

Deet nodded. 

“There’s a small cave nearby,” said Rian. “You should be safe there.”

“And I’ll stay with you,” said Raunip, “until the time comes.” 

“Come on,” said Rian. “I’ll lead you both to the cave.”

Raunip looked back as they walked off to the cave, only to see a long line of Arathim Spitters leading a forest of landstriders from the north, the latter bearing Vapra, Sifa, Dousan. Once, the Gelfling had all been one people, and maybe after today, they would be again. The suns were low in the afternoon sky. Once they made it through the long dusk, night would fall, and the ritual that he had first set in motion hundreds of trine ago would at last begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of stuff happens next chapter. See you then!


	13. (4.2) How It Should Be

Part 4.2 How It Should Be  
_A sisterly reunion. An untold number of horror monsters. Corrected vision. A specific grief. Unavoidable grotesquery._  
POVs: Brea, Gurjin, Tavra, Deet, Aughra

******

The three suns were low in the sky, but in the middle of the Endless Forest, Brea found it difficult to tell exactly how far each one remained above the horizon. There had to be a few hours at least until nightfall and the ritual. Plenty of time for the contingent coming down from the north to make it to Stone-in-the-Wood.

The Brea who had been fluttering around Stone-in-the-Wood a month ago, desperately trying to find things to organize rather than face her feelings about Seladon’s betrayal, might not have recognized the Brea who stood waiting in anticipation to be reunited with her now. The pain of Mother’s death was still there, but it had dulled, and her relationship with Seladon wasn’t perfect, but it was better. They had each managed to settle into their separate strengths, opening up enough space to defuse the tensions between them. Tavra was still a spider, and Brea still hadn’t been able to work that into her life yet, but soon this whole nightmare with the Skeksis would be over and then she’d have plenty of time to figure it out.

To the north, the endless expanse of forest seemed to thicken with slender white trees as an army’s worth of landstriders made its way through the woods. Seladon dismounted and Brea greeted her with an embrace. Rian and Onica approached, and Seladon reached her arm out towards Onica so that Tavra could scuttle over to her shoulder. Maudra Seethi descended from another landstrider, aided by a paladin. 

“All-Maudra,” said Rian from Brea’s side, “we’ve secured a perimeter around town. Stonewood, Spriton, and Drenchen soldiers, ten sevens in all, mounted on landstriders. With the addition of your soldiers and the Arathim Spitters, we should be able to double the line and keep a near-impenetrable border around Stone-in-the-Wood.”

“Good,” said Seladon. “According to Seethi, the twice-dream can only be done under the stars. We have a few hours until we can begin. Until then we must remain vigilant. Do we have all of the participants?”

“Myself," said Onica, “and Maudra Seethi.” Onica made a short deferential bow to the Dousan maudra before continuing. “And Kylan, and Naia, of course. Amri for the Grottan, Rian for the Stonewood since the Elders were very insistent on it. And we'll need a Vapra, if you have someone in mind.”

“With all due respect, All-Maudra,” spoke Maudra Seethi, “you should take the part of the Vapra in the ritual. The stronger the participants are in the dream-arts, the better.”

“Wait,” said Brea, “Seladon, you know a dream-art? What dream-art?”

“She’s mastered the dream-shadow.” Tavra had connected to Onica and spoke through her voice.

“I haven’t mastered it…”

“You managed to spend over an hour on a boat with skekSa and skekZok without either realizing it.”

“But I thought dream-shadowing was lost,” said Brea. “No one does it anymore.”

The afternoon light shot onto Seladon at sharp angles, and, in the stillness, she faded into the stripes so that Brea could see the trees beyond her. “Ma could do it,” said Seladon, fading back into view. “Her family preserved the art, but after she died, I guess Mother didn’t want us to practice it anymore.”

Brea was momentarily speechless. Seladon had never before betrayed the slightest clue that this was something she could do. “How long have you been able to do that?” she asked at last.

“I was trained as a child but never perfected it completely. It wasn’t until the last few weeks that I began to return to it.”

“Seladon, you have to be the one in the circle.”

“It would be a great honor, but I can’t. The paladin captains will have command the Vapran cavalry, obviously, but I need to coordinate among them.”

“I can do that,” said Brea. “We need the people in the circle to be as strong in the dream-arts as possible. This is our one chance to get as much information from the Crystal as we can.”

“Brea, it’s dangerous,” said Seladon. “You’ll have to travel back and forth between town and the perimeter.” Brea could tell that her sister was worried for her, which was sweet, but also ridiculous. 

“It’s barely dangerous,” Brea said. “There are hundreds of soldiers, and the Skeksis don’t even know that we’re here. And we need to make sure that this ritual works.”

“I’ll stay with Brea,” said Tavra, still connected to Onica. 

“Tavra will stay with me,” said Brea. _Tavra is a Threader. But I’ve spent a lot of time with Threaders, and with Tavra as a Threader, and I can handle this now._

“All right,” said Seladon. “Give the paladins until the Rose Sun is below the trees to get set up, and then go inspect the lines and come right back.”

Another hour or so passed as Stone-in-the-Wood and the forest around it buzzed with activity—some Gelfling preparing for the ritual, while others worked with the Arathim to spread out into a protective a ring around town, with the occasional cry of a landstrider echoing through the woods. When the Rose Sun had dipped at last behind the trees, Brea left her place by Seladon’s side and headed out along the dirt road that led west into the forest with the Threader— _Tavra_ —perched calmly on her shoulder.

Brea examined the empty town as she walked through its outskirts. The forest itself had already begun reclaiming the space that the Gelfling had fled only a few weeks ago. Vines grew unchecked over windows and doors; grasses sprouted up in the dirt road. Bushes, shrubs, and undergrowth that had once filled the spaces between houses now spilled out into gardens, yards, plazas. In the silence, the late afternoon light shone a coppery gold through the leaves and fell onto both this new growth and the old town that was sinking into it. 

_Just a few more hours_ , thought Brea. _Then we will know how to fix everything, and Stone-in-the-Wood can go back to how it used to be._

It was at that moment that the Threader on Brea's shoulder— _Tavra_ —let out a screech. Brea barely had a chance to react when a landstrider came storming down the road.

“Your Highness,” called the rider, a Stonewood. “Where is Rian?”

Brea heard faint shouting in the distance. “Back at the hearth. What’s wrong?”

“Garthim on the perimeter. We must…” 

His words were interrupted as a storm of landstriders and Spitters came sweeping down the road, stumbling, charging, swirling around some Darkened creature. It took Brea a moment to recognize that it was not another Spitter, but the creature she had seen in Naia and Amri’s memory back during the dreamfast in Ha’rar. 

Brea tried not to panic. She had been in battle once before, but that time there had been a clear plan. She tried to take a moment to clear her mind, when another landstrider, riderless, came stampeding directly at her.

“Tavra!” Brea shouted, and in an instant, there was her sister, her steady sister who always protected her, filling her entire mind. Brea surrendered control, and Tavra grasped onto the landstrider’s reins and pulled them up into the saddle in a single motion. Rummaging in the saddle bag, she found a bola and a dagger and tied them both onto Brea’s belt. _It’s going to be okay_ , Tavra said.

Tavra turned the landstrider and led them down the road and up over the ridge. A full battle raged below them, Gelfling on landstriders joining Arathim Spitters to face off against at least thrice seven Garthim. Far off through the trees, well beyond the Garthim, lurked the shadowy shapes of Skeksis on armalig chariots, keeping a safe distance. _Cowards_ , thought Tavra in their joint minds. 

Brea, disoriented by the connection with the Threader, felt herself slipping into a thousand Arathim minds. She saw flashes of the Endless Forest from a hundred different, dizzying angles, felt the pain of every Arathim injury. She occasionally saw flashes of silver, of Tavra, and tried to focus on them in order to pull herself back up to the surface of her mind, to little success. 

Brea managed to root herself in the point of view of a single Spitter, only to disorientedly watch from across the clearing as the landstrider with _herself_ on its back rose up and stabbed its two forelegs into the air. In the heat of battle, riding with a single hand on the reins while the other launched the bola, her body looked exactly like Tavra's, the one that had returned to Thra so long ago. 

_But why is the landstrider stabbing at the air? That’s odd_. Then, a blip of perception, for only half a breath, of a Garthim in front of the landstrider, the two locked in combat. 

Then the landstrider stumbled, and Brea felt her consciousness whip out of the Spitter and back into her body right before it landed on the ground with a thump, the Garthim looming over her. She rolled under the Garthim, felt Tavra’s mind pull the dagger from its sheath, and, with one mind, they stabbed upwards. 

The Garthim didn’t react to the stab wound, instead scurrying onward, dragging the knife across its belly in the process. Black ichor sprayed from the wound across Brea’s dress, face, hair. She and Tavra managed to roll out of the way just in time before the whole thing collapsed on top of them.

Brea, still on her back, barely had a chance to spit the Garthim blood out of her mouth before she found herself beneath the belly of another one. Under Tavra’s control, Brea’s dagger clanged ineffectually against the armored skin of the Garthim, trying to find soft spots between the joints. This one was different from the last one, though. The belly wasn’t as soft, as if the Skeksis had modified the Garthim in newer generations to fix the weak spots in the previous ones. The Garthim shifted suddenly, its heavy forelimbs now careening towards Brea’s head. Her body dodged just in time so that it ran over her leg instead.

Brea screamed in pain as the Garthim rolled over her. It raised a pincer and was about to bring it down, when another landstrider appeared and flung the Garthim onto its back. Brea felt Tavra ready to bolt onto the overturned Garthim and begin stabbing, oblivious to Brea's injury. Through the pain, Brea managed, finally, ground herself in her own body. She trained her mind on the silver flashes among the myriad consciousnesses that she was connected to and managed to touch her sister’s mind. _Tavra I think there’s something really wrong with my leg_ , she said. Instead of chasing after the Garthim, Tavra dragged Brea’s body over to a copse of bushes, where Brea promptly collapsed. 

Their joint minds in their shared body breathed together for several breaths. Brea's heart raced, but Tavra was used to battle, and she calmed her sister’s mind with memories of the two of them as children, chasing each other in the snowy light-filled Citadel gardens while Seladon looked on. _I missed you, Tavra_ , Brea thought.

Brea felt Tavra’s same old smile, even if she couldn't see it, and felt the timber of her voice, even if she couldn’t hear it. _I missed you too._

It was a nice moment, except for the searing pain in her leg. Of course the pain was beginning to fade rapidly as Brea’s vision increasingly became filled with a bright white light. In her last twirls of consciousness, Brea’s mind flickered back to the strange glitch she had noticed earlier, when she had watched herself on the landstrider’s back from across the clearing, and realized at last what it had meant. 

_The Spitters can’t see the Garthim_. With that final thought, Brea passed out from the pain, her face falling onto the dirt floor of the Endless Forest before Tavra could stop it.

******

The low light of the Rose Sun glinted off of his sword as Gurjin wiped the black Garthim ichor from it. It felt like hours since the Garthim had first come into view through the shadowy depths of the forest, but the Rose Sun had still not fully set. It would be another hour at least before nightfall, when the ritual could begin.

“That was a big one,” said his mother, pulling up beside him and looking down at the Garthim that he and his landstrider had managed to finish off.

“Are you sure we can’t just call off this ritual thing and try again another day?” he asked, sheathing his sword.

“Have you ever tried to coordinate seven circles of seven Gelfling across seven hearths…”

“I know, I know,” he said. “Just wishful thinking.”

“It's not so bad," his mother said. "We just have to kill off an untold number of these horror monsters and we’ll be free to have a nice relaxing evening in Stone-in-the-Wood.” 

“And we won’t kill the Skeksis,” Gurjin said, nodding towards the three who stood in the distance, hiding behind their creations.

“Not the Skeksis,” said his mother. “Your sister doesn’t think it’s a good idea, and I believe her.”

“Yeah, I know. It’d just make things a whole lot easier.” A flash came again of the castle, the Crystal, the feeling like he he didn't exist and had never existed. _And it would make sure that none of that ever happens again._

“Easy thing and the right thing…”

“…aren’t always the same. Yes, I know. I do listen to you and dad, you know.” He understood all the philosophical arguments. He agreed with them. He had met the urRu. They were annoying, but he didn’t want them to die. But deep down, after his torture at the hands of the Skeksis, after the draining of so many of his friends, well… it felt good to hack away at the Garthim at least. 

“That Garthim over there is trying to press in closer towards town.”

“Should we, uh, stop it, I guess?” He refrained from saying _hack it to bits_ , which he was only about half sure his mother would find funny and not troubling.

“I want to try Naia's idea. About using the dream-healing trance on it to try to figure out what it is."

“Do you think it will work?"

“I can’t think of anything else that will.”

Gurjin wasn't thrilled about getting close enough to a Garthim to perform a dream-healing on one. “Maybe we should just try to focus on surviving today.”

“We need to figure out what these things are if we’re going to survive any further than that.”

 _She's right of course_. Maybe if they figured out what the Garthim were, they’d be able to come up with new and innovative ways to hack them to bits. Or, you know, to heal them into gentle benevolent creatures instead of giant murder-beasts. Either way.

“All right," he said. "What's the plan?”

“We need to get close enough to it to touch it, obviously.”

“What if I just kill it first, to be safe?”

“I know you know better than that,” she said. _Yes, yes, you can’t dream-heal things that are already dead._

“We’ll try to flip it over at least," she began, "and then I’ll do the dream-heal while it’s disabled. If it’ll make you feel any better, while you’re waiting, you can cut off a few limbs so it can’t turn itself back over.”

“Thanks, Mom," he replied, pulling his sword from its sheath. "That does make me feel better.”

They charged towards the Garthim, swerving to either side as they closed in on it. His mother reached it first, her landstrider kicking it firmly on the chest. The Garthim responded by swiping at the landstrider, but his mother swerved out of the way. When her landstrider struck a second blow, its foot was sliced almost clean through by the Garthim’s pincer. The injured creature yelped in pain, and Gurjin's mother leapt off of it, freeing it to stumble off in retreat and nurse its wound. 

She spread her wings to slow her fall and, carried by her momentum, sliced one of the Garthim’s arm joints clean through the tendon. The creature failed to react as blood spurted from the wound and the arm fell limply to its side. She was continuing the arc of her fall when the Garthim shot out its pincer and snatched her up midair.

 _Time to skip right to the cutting-off-limbs part._ Gurjin leapt off of his landstrider, landed on the Garthim’s back, and began hacking away at its shoulder joint with his sword. With three firm chops, he cut clean through, and the pincer holding his mother fell to the ground, severed. He slid down the side of the creature, stopped near its legs, and managed to hack two of those off as well. The Garthm stumbled to the ground and did not get up again.

By the time Gurjin got down to his mother, she was lying on the ground next to the Garthim, reaching her hands towards its shell, both of them bleeding profusely. 

“Mom, what are you doing?”

“I need you to connect with me and the Garthim. Dreamfast with me and go into the healing trance on the Garthim. Now.”

“I need to use the healing trance on _you_ …”

“ _Now._ Before it dies.”

“Mom…”

His mother’s second-in-command pulled up next to them. “Arla, go get Naia,” Gurjin said. “She’s at the hearth preparing for the ritual.” Arla took one look at Maudra Laesid and raced off toward Stone-in-the-Wood. 

Gurjin put his hands on his mother’s wounds, but she pushed them away.

“The Garthim. _Now._ ”

 _So stubborn._ Gurjin put one hand to the Garthim and the other to his mother’s and did as she asked. 

His mind flashed away from the chaos of the forest battleground to another chaos entirely. Sound came to his senses first, an incessant shrieking underwritten by a deep, burbling groan. When sight came to him, it came in flickers, lines and spheres and boxes that he made out as limbs, heads, torsos, silhouetted against a background of violet light that made him feel sick to his stomach.

 _What are we looking at?_ he managed to ask at last.

Even in this chaos, his mother’s voice in his mind was steady. _I don’t know how the Skeksis did it_ , she began, _but this creature should not be. The pieces of it are tortured and at odds with each other and with what they have become._

Disjointed images continued to stream through their shared mind. For Gurjin, it was a screaming mess, but his mother was able to focus them. She caught one of the images and held it: an Arathim Spitter.

The Spitter’s memories filled their minds: two moons through the treetops, a breeze in the forest, cold air, and a spear out of nowhere. Then, darkness.

 _It died?_ Gurjin asked. _If it died, how is it a Garthim?_

 _It’s not the Garthim_ , his mother said. _The Garthim is grown from its parts. But there’s another._ Her mind focused on another image. A round, stubby, gray creature with its mouth sewn shut. _I don’t know what it is_ , she said.

But Gurjin recognized it immediately. _It’s called a Gruenak. The Scientist kept them as slaves in his laboratory. But I…_

A cudgel in the darkness, and Gurjin recoiled as if he had been struck. The light of a mechanical eye, and two more hits before his mother cut off the final memories of the Gruenak.

 _That’s it_ , she said. _There’s nothing more. Just those two wretched creatures, and when I tried to see the mind, the spirit that emerges from the whole, there is simply nothing. The creature is borrowed—no, stolen—parts, bound together by blight and moving without essence, without soul._

With that, their minds tumbled out of the trance. They were back on the mess of dirt and dead leaves that made up the forest floor, and his mother's blood was spilled all over it. “You have to tell the others,” she said. 

“You’re going to tell the others, Mom,” he said, squeezing her hand before going back into the dream-trance. He healed one broken blood vessel after another, but the blood kept coming. He noticed broken organs attempting to knit together, and knew that Naia had joined him. But the organs didn't quite knit, and more and more of the blood vessels were staying broken. 

Gurjin, the less experienced healer of the two, fell out of the healing trance a few seconds before Naia did. “No,” Naia said, trying to enter the trance again and again. “No, no, no.”

Gurjin looked down to where his mother’s hand covered his. “Naia,” he said, strangely calm. “It’s over.” 

“I’m not giving up. Get some water and a cloth…”

 _So stubborn._ “Naia, pull yourself together. You’ve always known this was going to happen someday and that it could happen like this.” _She’s so tough but she’s not a soldier._ “We’re in the middle of a battle.”

Slowly, gently, she removed her hands from her mother’s body. 

“Will you bring her back to town?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’ll have to do the ritual instead of me.”

“Don’t they need a dream-healer?”

“What do you think you are, silly?” 

“I couldn’t save her.”

“We maybe could have done it together, if I had arrived faster. But I think even that is probably wishful thinking.” He could tell that she was doing her best to hold them back, but a tear fell silently from her eye as she spoke, followed by another and another.

“She…we did your plan,” he said. “We used the healing trance on the Garthim. It’s some kind of… some kind of dead thing. Made from the corpses of an Arathim Spitter and a creature called a Gruenak. She said… Mom said that it’s bound together by blight and moves without essence.”

“So what happens when we kill them? Will it spread the blight?”

“I don’t know. But right now I don’t think we have a choice. We need to complete the ritual if we’re ever going to survive.”

Naia nodded with a sigh. “When you get back to town, tell Rian what you saw. He’ll make sure the information gets out to everyone.” She wiped the stream of tears from her eyes and began to rise. Gurjin grabbed her hand, his own mixed with the blood of the Garthim and of his mother. “Hey,” he said. “You’re going to do a good job.” Naia squeezed his hand in response, and then climbed back on her landstrider.

“Arla,” she called. “Tell all the soldiers that they report to me now. If anything happens to me, then my brother’s in charge. And then you. And then… and then I guess it won’t matter anymore.”

With his sister gone, Gurjin instructed a couple of soldiers to build a litter, and he carefully covered his mother’s body with her cloak. In the distance, the vaguest of shadows through the trees, he saw the Skeksis, preening and smirking and letting the Garthim do their dirty work. He wasn’t sure how people coped with the loss of a parent, but the feeling that washed over him now surprised him nonetheless. A flash back to the castle, to the dread he felt every morning, and the thought came to him. _At least now she’s safe._

******

Among the long shadows of the forest, Tavra felt Brea’s mind slipping away and she almost broke the connection to her sister’s body in panic. But the Threader whose body she shared, usually quiet, took over and calmed their joint mind. In the stillness, Tavra felt Brea’s body breathing, deeply, and she knew that her sister still lived.

Time to assess the situation. Brea was injured. Left leg, crushed, most likely broken in several places. Probably impossible to splint. They needed to get help somehow. She opened Brea’s eyes and rolled onto her back. Forest above. Sounds coming from the right. She carefully turned Brea’s head, but saw nothing. _I’ll have to prop her up on her side. Watch the leg._

Through the trees, out of shouting distance, Tavra saw seven or so Gelfling on landstriders, attempting to take down a single Garthim. She saw a handful of Spitters as well, but, as she quickly realized, they were scrambling scattershot as fast as they could away from the Garthim. _Are they abandoning us? What’s happ—_

Tavra let out a piercing scream through Brea’s throat. The pain in her crushed leg was suddenly beyond bearing. How had she not felt it before?

The voice of the Threader spoke within their joint minds. _I was lessening the pain by spreading it through the network_ , she said, _but the network has become overloaded. The Spitters are in a panic. They try to flee but they cannot flee._

Tavra recalled Brea’s final thought before she had passed out. She addressed the Threader. _What did Brea mean, that the Spitters can’t see the Garthim?_

In response, the Threader tugged Tavra along through the Arathim network, to the mind of a nearby Spitter, desperately trying to flee the battle. It aimed itself at a rocky outcropping, hoping to find a tunnel and burrow down into some deep cavern. Instead it collided headlong with an invisible force. A flicker, and a dark shadow jutted into Tavra’s mind before flashing out again. And then the Spitter could see no more. The Threader expertly drew their joint consciousness out of its mind before it drew its final breath.

 _Why? Why is this happening?_ Tavra asked the Threader, but she already knew that the Arathim were equally clueless as to an answer.

 _First things first then. We have to get Brea to a healer._

Tavra scanned the area for the closest Gelfling, and found a line of cavalry trampling through the trees. Spriton, it seemed, with Maudra Mera at the head. 

“Mera!” Tavra yelled, although she knew it was pointless. She reached around and found a good mid-sized rock. _If only I still had that bola._ Carefully, avoiding putting the slightest big of weight on the damaged leg, she managed to get Brea’s body into a sitting position. She wound up and threw the rock in Maudra Mera’s direction. 

It made it about half the distance. Tavra reached around for another rock, and hurled again. Still no luck.

 _I need a Spitter_ , she said to the Threader. _Can you put me in a Spitter again and put me in control?_

_They won’t like being used for your ends. And they flee._

Tavra watched as another line of Spitters was intercepted by two Garthim. She turned Brea’s head away as the bloodbath began. The pain of the Spitters and Brea’s leg mingled in her mind and she spent several minutes with her eyes shut, trying to control her sister’s breath. And, in that quiet moment, the realization came to her.

 _I can see the Garthim_ , she thought to the Threader. _I can see them through my sister’s eyes. If we can connect Threaders to Gelfling, we can lead the Spitters to safety._

Tavra felt her words ripple through the network, myriad voices, panicked and hushed, whispering Tavra’s message amongst the chaos, seeking guidance from the Ascendancy. She felt her consciousness slipping out of Brea’s body and scattering through the bodies and minds of a thousand Spitters until it brought her to an abstract space where there dwelled a single voice.

 _We are in accord with your plan_ , it said. _But will the Gelfling agree?_

 _I believe so_ , said Tavra. _But we’ll need one of their leaders to organize._ She pulled the consciousness of the Ascendancy back into Brea’s body and pointed Brea’s hand at Maudra Mera. _We need that one. Bring her to my location._

_It shall be done._

Tavra found herself back in Brea’s body, alone except for her Threader. She felt the dryness of her sister’s eyes and remember to blink them. _I really need her to wake up and take care of these things._ In the distance she saw Maudra Mera turn away from a Spitter and towards their location.

“Princess Brea?” she asked, dismounting her landstrider.

“No.” Without Brea’s mind joined with her, Tavra had trouble controlling the timing of breath and voice, and the word came out as a harsh whisper. 

Maudra Mera shifted her gaze to the Threader, as if recalling how Tavra and Seladon had worked together during their failed attempt to capture a Garthim. “Princess Tavra?” she asked again.

“Brea’s leg. It was crushed by a Garthim.” The voice that Tavra managed to get out was still raspy, but she was starting to get the hang of the timing. “She’s passed out from the pain. We need your help. And the Spitters. The Spitters can’t see them.”

Mera, doing her best to process the information, looked up from Brea’s leg. “The Spitters can’t see who?”

“They can’t see the Garthim for some reason. We need to help them escape.”

“What do you mean they can’t— ah.”

“What is it?”

“We received intelligence from Rian about the Garthim. Apparently we’ve never seen anything like them before because the Skeksis built them from scratch. And one of the things that they used was the corpse of an Arathim Spitter.”

Finally everything clicked. “So the Garthim still have some kind of connection to the Arathim network," said Tavra, "and they’re using it to block themselves from the Spitter’s minds.”

The sounds of the battle grew closer. Although the Threader tried her best to filter it, the panic of the Spitters intruded into Tavra’s thoughts, a low background hum that occasionally grabbed her attention. “All right,” said Tavra. “We have to get the Arathim out of here. At least as far as town, if not over the river.”

“I can have a group of my soldiers lead them to safety.”

“It will be too easy for the Garthim to cut between the landstriders and the Arathim. Even if the Gelfling rode the Spitters they wouldn’t be able to communicate fast enough.”

“What do you propose?”

“I cannot see the Garthim when I shift my mind into one of the Spitters, but I _can_ see them through Brea’s eyes. If we assign each Spitter a Gelfling with a Threader, the three as a unit should be able to navigate themselves to safety.”

“How many Gefling do you think we need?” asked Mera.

“Three sevens maybe? Perhaps four.”

“I can scrounge up three sevens. I’ll need to call in for reinforcements from the secondary perimeter, but I have enough people.”

“Will your soldiers be willing to do it? I don’t blame them if they fear the Threaders.”

“I’ll go first,” said Mera. “My people will do it, if I do it. Your Highness, will you come with me to gather them?”

“Brea can’t ride, her leg..."

“I mean Princess Tavra. The Threader. Will you come with me to show my people it’s safe?”

“Yes, but Brea…”

“I’ll leave a group of soldiers to carry her back to town. That’s easy.”

“All right, let’s do it,” said Tavra. 

She waited for two of Mera’s soldiers to bring over a litter and gently positioned Brea’s body onto it before severing the connection. Unattached, Tavra looked down at her sister from the outside. She was pale, her eyes clenched shut, as if they would never open again. Tavra had to fight the urge to reconnect just so she wouldn’t have to see her sister in this state. 

But the steady hum of Spitter panic rose again, and she knew that three had been slaughtered since her conversation with Maudra Mera had begun. 

Tavra scuttled up onto Mera’s shoulder while the latter finished addressing her soldiers. A Spitter approached and bowed low so that the two of them could climb onto her back. Tavra had never connected with anyone besides her sisters or Onica, but letting the Threader take the lead, she focused on guiding Maudra Mera through the process. With Gelfling eyes and Gelfling mind, the Threader could see the Garthim and relay the image to the Spitter. 

_This is different_ , said Mera. _But tolerable. Let’s get these Spitters to the river._

But a ripple of dissent came roiling through the joint minds of Tavra, Mera, and the Threader. It included the Spitter that they rode, but was much larger than any single creature. _Now we needn't flee_ , came the voice that was both single and many. _Now we have our eyes again. Now we fight._

******

The late afternoon sunlight shot through the forest and into the cave where Deet sat, eyes closed. She felt the light on her face, saw it through her thin eyelids, and recruited its warmth in the so-far successful struggle to keep the Darkening contained to small space within her. This method worked perfectly fine for the hour or so before the screaming started.

Deet’s eyes fluttered open with the first shout. She rushed to the entrance of the cave, where Raunip, stooped in his cloak, leaned on Lore. The cave sat at a slight elevation, and down in the forest below she could see vulgar, globular shadows scuttling amongst the thin, elegant lines of tree trunks and landstrider limbs. A Gelfling rider grasped onto the saddle as their landstrider reared and stomped its two forelegs onto a Garthim.

“The Skeksis,” Deet whispered. “How did they know?”

Deet had never seen the exact look on Raunip’s face before, an intensity that was as angry and powerful as it was silent and cold. “They are Skeksis,” he said. “Desperate and clever.” His expression softened as he turned to Deet. “You shouldn’t watch.”

Indeed, Deet felt the Darkening within her stir, pushing against the walls of the small space in which she had contained it. “Maybe I could try to herd the Garthim away from town,” she said. “I have more practice now, so maybe I can focus the Darkened energy and…”

“My sweet Gelfling, you cannot stop those abominations with the power of the Darkening. Look at their eyes. What do you think they are made of?”

Deet watched the Garthim scuttle through the forest, their bodies shell and shadow save for two pinpoints of violet light where eyes should be. 

“They must be powered by the Darkening,” said Raunip. “If so, the power within you cannot kill them, only make them stronger.”

The shouting grew more intense, but Deet could catch only flashes of the battle through the trees. It was impossible to tell how many Garthim there were, or who was winning. She closed her eyes and tried to center herself back around the warm sunlight, even as the sunlight rapidly faded into Great Sun dusk. 

Raunip blurted out an unintelligible sequence of sounds, breaking her out of her meditation. Deet opened her eyes to ask what he had said, only to see Hup enter the cave. He was covered in stray leaves and grass, his jacket torn.

“Hup! Are you all right?”

“Rian sent Hup check on Deet. Tell Deet stay here.”

Deet was about to reply when Raunip once again broke out in a long sequence of sounds. Hup’s eyes lit up, and she realized that he was speaking Podling. Raunip and Hup quickly became engaged in an intense conversation.

“Your friend Hup,” Raunip began once they had finished, “very bravely tried to speak with one of the Garthim.”

“What do you mean, speak with one of them?”

“Do you not know that Podlings can speak with the speechless beasts of Thra?” 

“UrSu mentioned something like that in the Valley of the Standing Stones," said Deet. "Hup, you approached one of those creatures? That was very brave.”

Hup shrugged, then said, “Creature approach Hup. Hup try talk. But no use.”

Raunip elaborated. “The noble Podling was on his way here, as per Rian’s request, when a Garthim crossed his path. He tried speaking to it, but it failed to respond. In fact, it kept barreling forth, and your friend dove down into a ditch as the Garthim passed over him.”

Hup spoke another long string, and Raunip translated. “They are completely senseless. It was as if the beast-speak was to them just background noise, like the wind in the trees or crunching leaves beneath their feet.”

“So we know that they are powered by the Darkening, and that they cannot communicate like the speechless beasts of Thra,” said Deet. “Raunip, do you think that means we can kill them without spreading the blight?”

“Killing is not the way of the Gelfling. At least, not the Gelfling I knew before the urSkeks came to Thra.” The shouting of Gelfling soldiers and sounds of Garthim tearing through the trees grew louder as the battle came closer and closer to their cave. “But I don’t know.”

A crash came to the left as a Garthim plowed down an ancient towering tree. A Spitter, with a Gelfling rider for some reason, had been fighting the Garthim and managed to dodge the tree in time, but a nearby landstrider, riderless, was less fortunate, and the crunch of branches breaking upon the ground mingled with the crunch of bone. 

Deet let out a scream and a flash of violet leapt into her eyes before she shut them firmly again and tried to concentrate on holding the Darkening back. But the Great Sun had set and the low light of the Rose and Dying Suns was not as warm. 

Gelfling on landstriders and Spitters began passing down below in greater and greater numbers, retreating backwards as the Garthim pushed further towards Stone-in-the-Wood. 

“We need to peel them off away from town,” said a familiar voice. “The second squadron will keep up the perimeter. But we can’t let them hedge us in further.” Naia hopped off her landstrider, her clothing and hair covered in black Garthim blood and dried red Gelfling blood. She glided down to a litter borne by two soldiers, picked up its limp occupant and headed towards the cave.

“Naia?” Deet asked as the other woman approached. “Is that… is that Brea? Is she…?” Deet felt the Darkening push against the sides of the little box she had made for it.

“Deet? What are you doing here?” Naia said, placing Brea gently on the cave floor. “Oh,” she said, upon seeing Raunip. “You’re here too.”

“It’s good to see you too again, my friend,” he said.

“Sorry, that was rude,” Naia said. “I’m a little worn out."

“What’s wrong with Brea?” asked Deet.

“It’s her leg,” said Naia. “The bone is smashed and she’s in shock. Mera’s soldiers were bringing her back to town, but I don’t think anyone there will be able to handle something like this.” She expertly cut off Brea’s leggings, and winced when she saw the bruising. “I don’t even know if _I_ can handle something like this.” She placed a hand on the leg, and entered the healing trance. 

Brea’s body was limp and pale; Deet tried to cover as much of it as she could with her cloak. Deet felt her heart breaking for her friend, and the Darkening seeped out of its container and into every crevice. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw streaky purple veins appear on the skin of her arms.

 _I can’t give in. It will just make things worse_ , she thought. Hup patted her gently on the arm in comfort, and she calmed. The veins faded away again. She did her best to ignore the terrible noises coming from outside and focused on Naia’s work instead. Slowly, the swaths of black and blue on Brea's injured leg faded to pink and gray, and after a few minutes, Brea opened her eyes.

“Deet?” she asked. “And Hup? Where am I?” She clutched at her neck. “Where’s Tavra?”

“Naia brought you here. She’s fixing your leg. I don’t know where Tavra is.”

Brea looked around the cave and her eyes fell upon its last occupant. “Hello, Brother Raunip,” she said, still a little dazed. “I saw you in Deet’s memory, in a dreamfast. It’s nice to meet you in person. Lore saved my life on multiple occasions.”

“Ah, so you are the one who solved our puzzle.”

“It seems like a very long time ago. Is Lore all right?” 

“He’s nearby. I’ll call him for you.”

A moment later, Lore peeked into the cave, raising his head in excitement to see Brea, then orienting it towards her leg in alarm.

“I’ll be all right,” Brea said. “Naia’s fixing it. I’m already much better.” 

Lore very delicately balanced a rock-arm on her head, approximating a pat, then went back to standing guard at the door.

Brea blinked a few more times and then focused her eyes on Deet. “Deet, you’re Darkened again.” 

“Yes, Raunip has found a way to help the Heretic and the Wanderer…”

“You’re going to use the shard to send them back home,” Brea interrupted. With a problem to focus on, Brea began to return to her usual self. “It all makes sense. The Crystal is how the urSkeks arrived in the first place, but you’re going to try to use the shard instead. But is just the shard enough?”

Raunip opened his mouth to speak but Brea kept going.

“But you are not a Gelfling. Your dream-stitching didn’t work the same way a Gelfling's does, so your dreamfasts might not either. And since you’re partly of the stars, you could perhaps guide creatures of the stars through your dreamfast, even if the signal from the shard is weaker than that of the entire Crystal.”

Raunip laughed. “You are very clever, aren’t you? It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yes, that’s the general idea.”

“If you need to be at the ritual with them, then you’d better hurry. It's supposed to start as soon as night falls.”

“Yes,” said Deet, “you mustn’t miss it. Tell the Heretic and the Wanderer that we’re thankful for everything they did for us.”

Raunip smiled and bent his head in his strange bow. “Be well, Deet,” he said. “I’ll come back here as soon as the ritual is finished and take the Darkening from you once and for all.” He climbed onto Lore and they rode off through the full dusk towards Stone-in-the-Wood.

After a few more moments, Naia came out of the dream-healing trance. “You’ll be able to keep the leg,” she said, drinking water from her flask and leaning back against the wall next to Brea to rest.

“What?” said Brea. “Was _not_ keeping it an option at one point?”

“Yes,” said Naia with a laugh. “It very much was. I managed to knit the bone back together, but there may be some small fracturing that I missed, and there’s still some bad bruising. You can walk on it if necessary but try to avoid it.”

“Thank you. I don’t know how you found me in the middle of all of that carnage, but I’m lucky you did.”

“Some Spriton soldiers were carrying you back to town when I came across them. Tavra and Mera went off together to help the Arathim. They need to use Threaders to link their minds to Gelfling or else they can’t see the Garthim.”

“Yes,” said Brea. “I noticed that when my mind was linked to the network through Tavra. It’s very strange.”

“My mother tried the healing trance on one of the Garthim,” said Naia, standing up and tying her flask back to her belt. “She said its body is partially made from a dead Spitter, which seems to be why the Garthim can interfere with the Arathim network. And then something called a Gruenak.”

“Gruenak?” said Brea. “I thought they had disappeared ages ago.”

“Gurjin said they had a pair in the Scientist’s lab.” She looked around the cave. “Where’s Raunip?”

“He went back for the ritual,” said Deet. 

“Naia, you have to get to the ritual too,” said Brea. “The Rose Sun is down. Dusk will be over shortly.”

“I sent Gurjin in my place.”

“But Maudra Seethi said…”

“His dream-healing has improved tremendously in the past few weeks. He’ll do fine.”

Brea opened her mouth to respond, when a Drenchen soldier approached the mouth of the cave. “Maudra Naia, the Spriton and the Arathim are holding the line to the southwest, but their northwestern landstrider line is breached. We need to move Drenchen cavalry to provide backup.”

“All right, I’ll be there.”

Deet put the words together, and saw Brea’s eyes widen as she did the same. “Your mother…?” 

“I hate all this killing,” said Naia, ignoring the question. “Even if these Garthim are some kind of unholy thing. There has to be a better way. I just wish I knew what it was.” Next to Deet, Brea leaned back against the wall, pale and silent. Naia put a hand to Brea’s cheek, then put another Deet’s shoulder, and headed back out again into the fight.

 _This is not who we are_ , thought Deet as she watched Naia and the Drenchen ride off, weapons drawn. _Killing is not the way of the Gelfling. That’s what Raunip said._

As the last light of dusk faded and the Garthim pressed in, Deet’s sensitive eyes saw familiar, lumbering shapes in the dark, their gangly limbs and sharp beaks forming threatening silhouettes in the twilight.

“Tavra said the Skeksis are cowards for hanging back and letting their creatures do the dirty work,” said Brea, gazing out into the woods from her position on the floor. 

The Darkening, having seeped out into the cracks in her heart once before, found its way all the easier the second time. For the first time since taking back the Darkening, Deet felt the other her, the her with the kindness drained out, grating against the edges of her consciousness. 

_It would be so easy, right now, to take out all three of them._ Deet looked down at the foot of her little hill, at the crushed body of the landstrider. She thought of the Spitters helplessly meeting their deaths against a force they could neither see nor escape. She thought of all of the Gelfling maimed or killed, Naia’s mother among them. And she thought of Brea and Naia and all of her friends forced to fight and kill the Garthim, and of the many trine before she was born when Gelfling and Arathim had killed each other due to a misunderstanding orchestrated by the Skeksis. She thought of herself, a few weeks ago, exploding skekLach in a burst of rage.

 _The Gelfling are not supposed to be killers_ , thought Deet. _It’s against our nature. But when the Skeksis came they changed our course. We were supposed to be something else and now we will never know what we were supposed to be._ And there, through the gateway of that specific grief, the Darkened Deet at last flooded into every corner of her consciousness.

“Brea,” she began, “do you see the Skeksis outside, skulking in the darkness?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to remind me why I shouldn’t kill them all right now.”

Brea turned her gaze to Deet and her eyes widened in fear, but her voice was steady, as rational as always. “You met the urRu, Deet. We wouldn’t be here without urSu and urLii’s help.”

 _The urSkeks are guilty_ , came the voice of the Darkened one. _All of them._ Deet couldn’t tell if the words had been spoken in her mind or aloud. 

“And Deet, it will spread the blight.”

_Three measly Skeksis?_

“If you kill them, you'll kill three urRu. Three innocents.”

_How about just one then?_

“Deet kind. This not Deet.” Somehow, it was Hup’s insistent voice that managed to push back the Darkening away from Deet’s surface back towards its small container deep within. But only a little. Still, Deet took her opportunity. _There are some things that, in the end, we cannot do._ At least not alone.

“Hup,” she said. Her voice a flutter, but it was her true voice. “Brea. Help me.”

Brea reached out her arms, her sleeves stained with the black blood of the Garthim, and pulled Deet backwards into them. Hup embraced her, and she wrapped her arms around him. 

_Now I can’t give in_ , she thought. If she gave herself over to the Darkening, then her friends would wither, just like everything that she touched had withered after the last battle. _We miss you and we love you and we want you to be safe._

Slowly, the rage inside of her died. With nothing to feed it, the Darkening ebbed, still licking at the edges of her spirit, like the small ripples at the edge of a riverbank, but not flooding it. 

“Thank you,” Deet said, as she leaned into Brea, Hup by her side. She felt Brea’s arms tighten around her, Hup’s hand on her hand. The three of them remained on the floor of the cave, clinging to each other, as the long dusk slowly faded into night.

******

The Rose Sun had just set and the moonless night begun when Aughra and urSan the Swimmer emerged from the river on the outskirts of Stone-in-the-Wood. In the distance, an endless stream of shouts, the calls of rearing landstriders, the crashes of tumbling tree trunks, the screams of pain of Gelfling, Arathim, the creatures of Thra both speechless and wise.

“I fear we are too late,” said urSan. “I should have found you more quickly.”

“Not your fault. I am sometimes very hard to find,” said Aughra. She had been diverted from her investigation of the Garthim by another trail, one that, unlike the Garthim, she knew very well. She had followed it all the way into the mountains of Ha’rar, near Kira-Staba, when urSan had finally found her. 

“There is still much bloodshed that we can stop,” Aughra said. “If I can finally figure out exactly what these abominations of the Skeksis are.” The cursed creatures injected notes of discord into the song of Thra, but unlike the Skeksis and the urRu, they were not alien to it. The notes weren’t _wrong_ per se, but they were in all the wrong places. Wherever they had originally come from, they had become scattered, knocked out of turn, extracted from chords and grafted back into mismatched keys. 

“Let’s climb that hill over there and try to get a good look at the field of battle at least,” Aughra said to urSan. Both moved slowly, by physical limitation and by spiritual nature, respectively, but the former was easier to overcome in a crunch, and Aughra managed to climb up well ahead of her companion. From the top of the hill, she counted dead Garthim on the field… nine, ten, eleven. But many more remained. Worse, the number of landstriders and Spitters that lay fallen on the forest floor was much greater. There were plenty of Gelfling dead as well, although no doubt even more of their number had already been dragged off the field by their companions. In the farthest distance, the shadowy figures of three Skeksis, waiting in safety like the cowards they were. 

Aughra called down to urSan, who had finally made it up to a landing seven feet or so below the summit. “Swimmer, can you tell if the Mariner is among them?”

“She is nearby, but away from the battle, north, by the river,” replied urSan. “Also, I have encountered a… small person.” Aughra peered down at the ledge below and assessed the situation.

“Could’ve just said Podling you know,” she muttered as she descended the hill to the join urSan and the Podling.

[Mother Aughra], said the Podling, deferentially. 

Aughra leaned in and inspected him closely. [You were the one traveling with the Gelfling, were you not? Came to Stone-in-the-Wood with that rock fellow. What are you doing here?]

[I’m here with my friends, weathering the battle. But the Garthim are getting closer.]

“Hup?” came a voice from within the cave. “Hup, who are you talking to?”

Aughra crawled into the cave, with urSan poking her head in from the entrance. “Princess Brea,” said Aughra. “And Deet. The Darkening is still within you. How have you survived all this time?”

“I was rid of it for a little while, but I took it back.” 

“How did you…?” 

Aughra’s words were interrupted by the loud crack of an ancient tree colliding onto the forest floor, followed by the screams of Arathim and Gelfling alike. 

“The Garthim grow closer,” said urSan.

“I must figure out how to stop them,” said Aughra, “but I cannot figure out how they fit into the song. Or rather, how they don’t fit into the song.”

[They don’t respond to the speech of beasts], said the Podling Hup, [or the speech of the wise]. 

“If they don’t respond to either form of speech, then how can they be living creatures of Thra?” Aughra asked. “Only plants or rocks are insensitive to one kind of speech or the other. Don't look like plants or rocks to me.”

“Naia said that her mother performed a dream-healing on one,” said Brea. “That its parts were Spitter and Gruenak, but dead somehow. That they were mixed together and made to move again.”

“And Raunip said that they’re powered by the Darkening,” said Deet.

“It’s obvious they’re powered by the Darkening, but…” Aughra trailed off as Deet’s words fully registered. “Raunip?” Several different threads came together, and Aughra laughed. “Here I am following his trail all over the Skarith Land, and of course he’s here in the thick of trouble. He’s the one who took the Darkening from you in the first place, wasn’t he?”

Deet nodded.

“But he bit off more than he could chew, and he had to give it back. Of course he did.”

“He said he will take it back once the ritual is over.”

“I’m sure he intends to,” Aughra said. Another crash, closer than the last. “Well enough about that lovable scamp. Dead Spitter and dead Gruenak, you say? I can work with that.”

She exited the cave, stabbed her walking stick into the earth before her, and listened again for the song of Thra. This time, when she heard the discordant notes from the Garthim, she could sift them out, identify how they _should_ be instead of how they were. She heard the threads of song that were Arathim, both living and dead, and the threads which were Gruenak, now all dead, and set them aside. Then she focused in on the threads of Spitter and those of Gruenak that were neither living nor dead. _There. There are the Garthim._

“Come, Swimmer,” Aughra said when she emerged from her trance. “Let us pay a visit to our friends, the Skeksis.”

Aughra climbed on urSan’s back, and together they set out towards the Skeksis looming in the shadowy distance. Although urSan possessed the slow deliberation of an urRu, they managed to make it almost all of the way to the Skeksis before encountering one of the dread creatures. When the Garthim bore down on them, neither Aughra nor urSan flinched. As both expected, the blow did not come.

“Garthim,” called skekUng. “Do not harm urSan.”

“Is that wise?” asked skekSil. “The Emperor has no favor for Lord Mariner. But will be much displeased if this urRu aids Gelfling in completion of ritual.”

Both skekZok and skekUng looked at skekSil with moderate distaste before the latter spoke. “I fight now only for the good of the Skeksis, and for Skeksis unity. I will not turn against one of our own. Besides, one urRu cannot be everywhere at once. There are still two sevens of Garthim on the loose.”

“But she bears the crone,” said skekSil.

“Even Aughra has her limitations,” skekZok said.

 _The crone does have her limitations_ , thought Aughra. _But this isn’t one of them._ As urSan approached the Garthim, it obeyed orders and deactivated. Aughra climbed off of urSan’s back and climbed onto the black crest of shell that served as its head. Eyes closed, she focused on its song, on the mismatched vibrations that emanated from it. _There, there is the Arathim thread._ She isolated it and set it aside. Then, faintly, the Gruenak thread, a song that had become so weak that she hadn’t heard it in the Great Song in a very long time. The two threads isolated, she gripped them tightly with her mind.

And then she pulled.

She pulled on the thread of song that had been Arathim, and pulled on the thread that had been Gruenak, unbraided the strands that had been woven together. In the instant that the two strands came apart, a bolt of violet lightning crashed into her brain. 

Aughra felt herself sinking as the Garthim beneath her disintegrated, but she was dizzy, disoriented, and couldn’t control her fall. The Swimmer shot forth, faster than Aughra had seen an urRu move in quite a long time, and caught her on her back before the whole dark creature crashed to the ground.

Aughra lay flat, staring up at the deep blue-black sky, precariously balanced on the back of urSan, and her mind was empty. She blinked at the sky one, two, three times. A star appeared, the first of the evening. With the star came Aughra’s focus. She sat up on urSan’s back and looked at the place where the Garthim had been. 

There, on the earth, lay two dead things, or rather two things that should have been dead but were not: a lump of flesh with two long spindly legs like black tree branches at dusk, and a green-gray mass with something like a torso and a head, eyeless, but with a gaping mouth, the misshapen, incomplete form of a Gruenak. Both quivered eerily in the dying light of Rose Sun dusk, beneath the dark trees of the shadowy forest, and then, at last, were still.

“I have to say that I did not foresee any of those consequences,” Aughra said, when her mind had returned and the undead flesh had ceased its writhings. 

“Should we stop?” said urSan. “Perhaps the Gelfling and the Arathim together can finish off the rest of the Garthim.”

“No,” said Aughra. “It is my job to sort out these kinds of messes. I must learn my limitations when it comes to these Garthim. And I do not want the creatures of Thra to kill or be killed any more than they already have. We will heal these beasts, even if such healings bear grotesque fruit. Until I can come up with another way.” _The whole business of these beasts is grotesque. No avoiding it, maybe._

And so Aughra rode on the back of a Mystic to undo the evil work of the Skeksis. She approached Garthim after Garthim and, one by one, returned them to Thra, misshapen, grotesque, but now once again fitting into the larger song. The Skeksis lamented but did not dare risk the loss of urSan, and by the time dusk had passed into night they had fled. Although plenty remained in the castle, no Garthim remained in the Endless Forest.

“Perhaps,” said Aughra, lying on her back on the forest floor, “I will be able to stave off this army of the Skeksis after all.”

But each time she had untwisted a Garthim, it had taken longer for her mind to recover. Even now, under the stars, she felt a slowing of the gears of her mind, and, for a moment, she forgot who she was and what she was doing in the middle of the forest with an urRu. _Or maybe I will not._

“Mother Aughra,” said one of the Gelfling, the Grottan girl with the Darkening in her, what was her name? She had climbed down from her cave, flanked by the Podling and supporting the injured Vapra—what was she again, some kind of librarian? anarchist? princess? One of those three. 

“You saved us,” said the Darkened Grottan. And then Aughra smiled. _I am here to save the Gelfling, so the Gelfling can save all of Thra._ If Aughra had to sacrifice her mind in the process, then so be it. _Something else about that Darkened girl. What was it?_

“You must go to my son,” said a clear corner of Aughra’s mind to the girl. “He will not make it back here.”

It was at that moment that the night sky burst open with blue flame, but no creature of Thra was burned.


	14. (4.3) Each Light Doubled

4.3 Each Light Doubled  
_Room for hope. The past and the now. A bridge between worlds. An unexpected prophecy. The coolness of riverwater._  
POVs: Onica, Kylan, Raunip, Brea, skekSa

******

The Dying Sun sank below the tree line, leaving the low light of the Rose Sun alone to catch in the crystal shard as Onica finished securing it in position, suspended over the Crucible on a framework of old swords. The dream-etch from the boat had given no specifics on where exactly to place the shard during the ritual, but Onica had a good feeling about how hanging it above the Crucible mirrored the way the Crystal of Truth hung in the castle. And it was best to trust intuition for these things.

From far off in the woods came faint shouts, clangs, and screams in a muffled but constant stream. Onica closed her eyes and tried to imagine Tavra back safely, then climbed back down to the ground. _I may still be grieving who she used to be, but losing who she is now would be even worse._

Halfway inside base of the Crucible, Rian arranged a stack of wood over a pit of charcoal. “My whole life, this fire never went out,” he said, leaning back on his heels. “I suppose I should have expected it to happen when we evacuated, but it’s still upsetting.”

“Consider this a renewal, then,” said Onica. “Maybe after today the Gelfling will return to Stone-in-the-Wood.”

“I’d like to believe that,” he said, but she heard doubt in his voice. He stood, not bothering to brush the dirt from his pants where he had kneeled. “I’m going to get another batch of kindling.” 

In the silence, scattered shouts came echoing through the woods, closer than before. A flash, so real that she seemed to see it with her waking eyes, of her vision from the night they had found the song of the urSkek, her vision of the Skarith Land, dried out in whites and browns, like bones. 

But this was no time for such an ill omen. She pushed the vision aside. _There is always room for hope._

“Another Garthim down,” reported Amri from his perch in a tree to Seladon below. In the fading light his eyes were best for the lookout task, and he received occasional reports from his Threader, now that the latter had recovered from the earlier slaughter of the Arathim. Through the Threader, they had learned that Tavra had joined with Maudra Mera to help the Spitters, and that Brea was injured but on her way back to town.

Below the tree, Seladon was analyzing the incoming information and updating the orders for the soldiers assigned to protecting the hearth area during the ritual. “That’s nine Garthim down,” she said, making another mark in her notes. “And… a lot left to go. At least twice seven. Do you see any casualties?” 

“One Spitter with a broken leg,” said Amri, “and two Gelfling down, but they seem to be moving.”

“Any sign of Brea yet?” Seladon’s voice was heavy and low when she said it.

“Not yet,” said Amri. 

Before Onica’s eyes, the green leafy ceiling of the Endless Forest faded to brown, withering until there was nothing left but bare tree trunks and old stone. Onica blinked hard and the vision flickered away. 

“It hasn’t been that long,” Onica said, caressing a young leaf on a low-hanging branch. “If they’re carrying her on foot, it makes sense that they’re not here yet.” 

“She _wanted_ to go in my place,” said Seladon. She looked down at her notebook. “There was no stopping her, really.”

“She’s going to be fine,” Onica said. 

“I’m keeping an eye out for her,” said Amri, with a wink and half a smile. His gaze flickered around town before briefly resting on the old inn. What little smile he had faded away, and he turned back to the battle. 

A handful of soldiers stood guard in front of the inn, whose great hall now housed countless wounded laid out on its long tables, and whose storeroom was now empty save for the shrouded bodies of the dead. A short time ago, Gurjin had entered with his mother, Kylan trailing after him, and both had yet to emerge. 

Onica closed her eyes before the inauspicious vision of a withered Thra could come to her again. _Let’s just get this ritual over with_ , she thought. She turned away from Seladon and Amri and tried to find something to do, but Rian still wasn’t back with the kindling, and of course Maudra Seethi wasn’t ready yet. 

Seated in a circle near the Crucible, Seethi and a group of Dousan crushed pebbles into dust. In order to bring them into the twice-dream, as Seethi called the state straddling dreamspace and waking life, she would have to mark the ritual space with a precise geometric pattern which was, apparently, best done using local materials. With the Rose Sun low on the horizon and the Great Sun and Dying Sun already set, Onica grew anxious, but the Dousan continued to grind away at pebbles as if there wasn’t a line of dread killing machines moving slowly but steadily towards them.

“I wish I could be that relaxed,” said Rian, nodding towards Seethi and the Dousan. He dropped the pile of kindling and began to arrange it inside the base of the Crucible. Onica waited impatiently for him to finish, eager to make any progress towards their goal. _Maybe I’ll get the torch ready. I need to set something on fire._

“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Seladon asked as Rian’s head popped back out from under the Crucible. “The last time we did this the Skeksis were able to hear us through the Crystal in the castle.”

Rian, taking the flaming torch from Onica, nodded his head towards the outskirts of town, from which the sounds of battle echoed through the twilight. “It’s a little late to keep them from figuring out what we’re up to,” he said. “And this is the fastest way to check in with the other six hearths.” Onica recalled the attempt to coordinate communication among seven Threaders a few days ago. Despite valiant efforts from all parties, it had ended in nothing but chaos. Headaches for the Gelfling hosts, and whatever the spider equivalent of a headache was for the Arathim.

“Let’s light this thing up,” Onica said, pointing an impatient thumb at the Crucible. 

With a nod from Seladon, Rian put the torch to the kindling, and then came a whoosh of flame to drown out the distant shouts of battle, at least for a moment. Another moment passed and the flames rose high enough to bathe the shard, suspended in its chain. The flames whooshed again as they flickered from orange and yellow to blue and green. Faces of Gelfling in each of the hearths, spread across the Skarith Land, floated amongst the flames. 

“Fellow Gelfling,” said Rian. “We prepare now for a ritual like none other in living memory. What news of preparations from the seven hearths?”

“Cera-Na has completed preparations,” came Tae’s voice. _So she managed to get my boat back home in one piece_. Tae’s voice was followed by voices that Onica did not recognize from Wellspring, Ha’rar, Domrak, Sami Thicket, and then Naia’s sister at Great Smerth. _They still don’t know_ , Onica thought with regret. _Well, this is hardly the way to tell them._

“I thank you all for your efforts,” said Rian. “And I must be truthful about the situation at Stone-in-the-Wood. The Skeksis have attacked us with their new creatures, the Garthim. But we are determined to complete the ritual as planned. Our soldiers, along with the Arathim, have kept the Garthim at bay, and have successfully struck down nine. It is less than an hour until nightfall. We will send a signal when we are ready to begin.”

As Rian spoke, the Dousan each stood and poured the contents of their bowls into one large bowl before Seethi. She stood, lifting the bowl before her and offering it up to the sky before placing it on her hip. She nodded to Rian and Onica, and then began scattering the dust on the earth in a complex pattern of triangles, circles, and lines. 

_This is finally happening_ , thought Onica. After pondering the question of how to heal the Crystal and send the Skeksis and urRu home, finally, they would be able to get their answer. She kicked her doubts about the future firmly out of her head and leaned into her hope.

“I’m going to check on Gurjin,” Rian said. He placed the torch in a holder at the base of the Crucible and headed over towards the inn. A moment later, Kylan emerged and joined Onica.

“Are we going to practice the ritual again?” he asked her. “It might help take people’s minds off of things.”

“Is Gurjin doing that badly?”

Kylan shrugged. “He needs to keep his mind off of things.” He glanced quickly around the hearth. “Brea’s not back yet?”

“Not yet.”

He took a deep breath and held it. “Then I also need to keep my mind off of things,” he said when he let it out. 

"We need to light the small fires once Seethi is done drawing the pattern,” Onica said. “So we can distract all of us with that. Then we just have to wait until Rian’s friends get here and get the ritual over with and everything will be fine.” 

“Are you nervous about Brother Raunip and the others joining at the last minute?”

“It’s hard to say no to the son of Mother Aughra,” she said. “Besides, rituals are more fun when they’re half-improvised.” Even better, successfully returning an urSkek through the shard would again mirror their goal, which her intuition told her would strengthen the ritual. 

Now if only she could get rid of that blasted vision of the future Thra where the ritual failed. 

“What’s that face?” Kylan asked.

Onica sighed. Maybe talking about it would help. “The night we found the urSkek song, when I held open the dreamspace pocket for you and Brea, I had a vision. Podlings drained in the castle, Mother Aughra with her mind addled, Skeksis ruling over a lifeless Thra. It’s silly. Not all visions come true, and I’ve tried to set this one aside, but…”

“…it keeps popping up, uninvited. The barren plain, everything dusty and withered, like old bones,” he said.

Onica’s heart stopped. “You’ve seen it?” 

“Sometimes, when I’m concentrating on something else, like when I was carving this firca back at Great Smerth. My mind drifts to a wasteland that fills the whole Skarith Land.” 

Onica didn’t know how to reply. “If both of us are having the same vision of an endless wasteland,” she said after a few moments, “that doesn’t bode well for hope.”

Kylan glanced at her and smiled gently. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” he said with a shrug. “Just two completely unrelated endless wastelands.” In the impatient moments until nightfall, punctuated by the sounds of an encroaching battle crashing its way through the trees, Onica let herself laugh softly.

A crash, and then the cry of a wounded landstrider came echoing through the shadowy trees. Kylan’s smile disappeared. “She should be back by now,” he said. 

Onica didn’t know what to say anymore, so she took his arm, and together they watched Seethi weave past the Crucible, tracing a graceful symbol behind her, like a snowflake with seven points.

“I think Rian’s friends are here,” came Amri’s voice from the trees above. “At least, I hope so because one of them is a Skeksis.” He pointed towards the direction of the river, away from the Garthim line. 

The forest was already dark with dusk to the east, but Onica could see three figures moving through the trees, what could easily be an urRu and a Skeksis, and a third, taller than either, and strange of shape. As they entered the torchlight in Stone-in-the-Wood, Onica realized the third figure was really two: the rock-creature that Brea had discovered with her help what now seemed ages ago, and a shriveled creature of forest and root, like Mother Aughra, but not. 

Onica had seen Brother Raunip before in the dreamfast at Ha’rar, but still she felt awed at his presence. Like Mother Aughra, he remembered the Gelfling before they were seven clans, before they had ships and cities and libraries. He represented a fresh forest morning, and part of Onica despaired to see him in his current state of worn decay. She held on more tightly to Kylan’s arm, to comfort him as well as steady herself. 

“Those two are the Heretic and the Wanderer,” he said, nodding towards the Skeksis and the urRu. “Brea showed them to me in a dreamfast.”

Raunip dismounted Lore with a limp, and, wrapping his cloak around himself, leaned on his friend urGoh as he approached the Crucible. His gait was slow, and in the long moments it took for him to complete the journey, the Gelfling in the hearth of Stone-in-the-Wood slowed their activities and watched in silence. 

“Welcome to Stone-in-the-Wood,” said Rian, emerging from the inn with Gurjin behind him.

“Thank you, Rian,” said Raunip. “I’m sure you’d like to know that Deet was still doing well when I left her with her friends.”

“Her friends?” asked Onica. At last, she had a good feeling about something again. “Which friends?”

“Hup, the Podling, Rian you sent him,” said Raunip. “And Naia and Brea. The latter was injured but was doing better by the time I left.” 

Onica felt Kylan untense slightly next to her. “Oh thank Thra,” she heard Seladon mutter under her breath.

“Well, that’s a bit of good luck for once,” Onica said. Her smile was a small one, but it was genuine. 

“This is Onica,” Rian said to his guests. “She’s the one whose vision brought us here.” 

“Honored host,” said Raunip, bowing to Onica, “we humbly ask your permission to join your ritual. May I dreamfast with you, so we may share our respective visions and coordinate our plans?” He raised a weak, tired hand. 

_Dreamfast with one such as this?_ Half-disbelieving, still holding on to Kylan’s arm with one hand, and pressed the other hand to Raunip’s. 

It was like no dreamfast she had ever known. He passed his vision of his plan for skekGra and urGoh, but beyond that vision streamed memories of thousands of trine. And, within those thousands of trine, she was immersed in a Thra of neverending green. At the vision of this green Thra, Onica filled with both awe and mourning, and she let her vision of the wasted Thra yet-to-come float into their joint minds, a question to this ancient one. 

“Ah, sweet Gelfling,” said Raunip, breaking the trance. “I’m afraid I’ve never been much of a soothsayer. I cannot tell you what the future holds.”

“We can integrate you into the ritual,” Onica said, putting on a strong face in the midst of countless swirling worries: of the lost green Thra, of her friends and loved ones still locked in battle with the Garthim, of all the Gelfling and Arathim and landstriders slaughtered already.

Raunip took her hand in his, warm like the trunk of an old tree bathed in sunlight. “Thank you, little one. And know this. I may not know the future, but I have never given up, not after a thousand trine. Not after two thousand.” 

Onica felt the warmth of his hand spread into her heart, and, in the briefest of flashes, she saw, for the first time since this accursed vision had come to her in Ha'rar, the bone-dry wasteland grow green once more.

******

Rose Sun dusk fell, and faint stars appeared one by one in the blue-black sky. Kylan handed another log to Onica. He tried to filter out the endless stream of shouts, crashes, and shrieks coming from the forest, and tried not to think about how the two women he cared about most in the world were out there amongst them.

Onica balanced the logs into a pyramid, as he had first watched her do here in Stone-in-the-Wood a month ago. They lit the kindling and then moved on to the next fire. Maudra Seethi had finished drawing the dream-wheel in crushed forest stone, a pattern of triangles, curves, and lines. It included seven inner circles, one for each of the participants, and seven outer circles. In the desert the Dousan painted the outer circles with a paste made from bioluminescent plants, but for this ritual Onica had insisted on using fires instead, to mirror the one in the Crucible, and to mirror the blue flames in her vision. 

Onica had been anxious earlier but was calmer now that the ritual was about to begin. Across the circle, Gurjin efficiently lit his second fire, black Garthim blood still smeared in his hair. Rian had been hovering around him, but had been shooed away; he now checked in with Seladon, making final arrangements with the guards before the ritual. Amri sat alone in the lookout tree, his face riddled with worry now that he thought no one was watching him. He kept glancing at the inn that housed the dead and injured, then over at Gurjin, then back out into the woods. 

Kylan wished he could take his friends’ worries from them; instead, he imagined their anxiety pooled together, shared the same way the Arathim shared thought and sensation. If they couldn’t escape their fears, they could at least bear them together. 

“Log,” said Onica, waving her hand in front of his face. 

Kylan looked down at the log in his hands, which he had to admit he had forgotten all about, and then offered it to Onica.

“Sorry,” he said.

“That’s all right, I’ve kind of built your daydreaming into my process. After the last few weeks, I think I’ve finally figured you out.”

“Maudra Mera always used to say things like that to me.”

“I didn’t mean anything bad by it. Just that we’ve learned how to work together.”

“Oh.” That was something to consider. Maudra Mera was bad at showing affection, so maybe it had been her way to…

“Like right now,” Onica began, “I’ve figured out that I may have sent you into another thought spiral. I’m sure your relationship with Maudra Mera is very complicated, but right now I need you to focus on logs.”

“Log,” he said with a smile, handing her the third one. They piled kindling beneath it, and within minutes, the seventh and final fire roared along the edge of the dream-wheel, a humble mirror to the sky-wheel of burning stars above.

“Come on,” said Onica. “Let’s gather our friends and save the world with magic and firca-playing.” 

A particularly loud crash came from the woods as Kylan approached Amri. “Another tree down,” the latter said from his perch. “A big one. They’re getting closer.”

“This is very frightening,” said Kylan.

Amri hopped down from the tree. He bit his lip, then said after a moment, “Yes, it is.” His eyes flickered back to the inn. “Naia’s a maudra now,” he said.

“Yes, she is.” Kylan had to admit that if he were in Amri’s position he would find the thought a little intimidating.

“And her brother hates me.”

That was new though. “Gurjin?” Kylan asked. “He doesn’t hate you, he…” Now that he thought about it, during the last week at Great Smerth he hadn’t seen Gurjin and Amri interact at all. So it was _possible_ that Gurjin had been avoiding Amri. But Gurjin didn't usually hate people, so there had to be something else going on. _When Amri and Naia first left together for Grot, Gurjin was worried that Amri would be a burden to her, but they made it back safely, so that can’t be it…_

“You know, the thing where you trailed off and couldn’t figure out how to finish your sentence is kind of undermining your argument,” said Amri.

Kylan refocused. “Gurjin’s just going through a lot right now,” he said. He put a hand on Amri’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Amri with what was clearly a false smile. “Anyway, the red-head over there is sending a light scowl in our direction. We better get to the circle.”

Indeed, the others had already taken their places for the ritual, and Onica was frowning at them with impatience. Kylan patted Amri once on the shoulder, wishing that this conversation had come at a better time. _Let’s just get through the ritual_ , he thought. _Then Naia will be back safely and things will work out_. It would probably take Naia only a few minutes to straighten out Amri and Gurjin both. 

They approached the circle, and Kylan took his place to Maudra Seethi’s right. Raunip and SkekGra and urGoh stood on the roof of a low building on the edge of the plaza, eye-level with the crystal shard suspended over the Crucible. Onica spoke.

“Friends,” she said. “We sit on the edge of a new beginning. Let us sing, for the Gelfling, for the Podlings, for the Arathim, for the Great Trees and for the landstriders and for all the wise and speechless creatures of Thra. And let us sing for the Skeksis and the urRu, so that all may be made whole again. Let us sing until the blue flames burst into the night and until they fade away again.”

Next to Kylan, Maudra Seethi began chanting, not yet the song they had discovered with the spiral, but something in the Old Gelfling language, the spell that lead into the twice-dream. Her chanting began slow but raced into a frenzy, and at the moment her shouting reached its loudest, she went silent and raised her face to the stars. 

Seethi raised her hand to Onica’s. Onica accepted the dreamfast, and she too pinned her gaze to the stars. Kylan began playing the song that they had chased across space and memory, and Seethi and Onica began to sing. The faintest of blue lights shone forth from within the crystal shard. 

Onica raised her hand to Seladon’s, and so it passed, Seladon to Gurjin, Gurjin to Rian, Rian to Amri. Kylan placed the firca on the ground beside him and touched his palm to Amri’s on his right, and to Seethi’s on his left. The circle was complete, and seven Gelfling sang the song of the spiral in both dreamspace and in waking life.

In that instant, the whole world shifted. The shades of green in the plants and in their skin shifted into blues and yellows, the violets in the flowers and in their clothes shifted into blues and reds, the many browns of soil and tree and cloth shifted into blues and yellows and reds. Disoriented, Kylan turned his face to the stars, each light in the sky doubled: one light for dreamspace, and one light for the waking world. 

Blue light flickered in the corner of his eyes, flames licking at the treetops at the edge of his vision, but nothing burned. His eyes to the stars, licked by blue flame, his mind found itself back on the barren plain, the lifeless Thra of his and Onica’s matching visions of the future. 

No—when he managed to focus his mind, he realized he wasn’t seeing a vision of a future Thra, but one of Thra right now, although not right here. On the border of the Plains and the Endless Forest, near the Mystic Valley, sat a ruined home, the one where he had been born, as it stood not in the future, but as it must stand now, alone and forgotten. 

Then, a shift, and he saw everything that had brought the ruined house to the current moment, stretching backwards through time. The wooden frame grew less wind-beaten, less weathered, the rafters sprung back up into place, the weeds shrunk back into the earth. He braced himself for what would come next, for a murder playing out in reverse. He knew that he couldn’t break the trance without breaking up the ritual, that he would just have to play through the whole memory, and so he did. Broken, bloodstained bodies that his younger self hadn’t been able to bear to look at, the monster made of bones, alive once more. 

But the memory played backwards, which meant it got less bad the longer it went on, and there, on the other side of it was a family under a blue sky. The house was still new, and the the grain in their fields shone gold beneath the three suns. He was a child of three or four in his mother’s arms, sitting together on a tree branch. She leapt off and he yelped in fright as they swerved through the air. By the time she dropped him into his father’s arms, his fear had faded and he laughed as his father held him close.

The flicker of the blue flames dropped from his peripheral view as the fire began to die down. As he lowered his head, the faces of his friends came into view and the same backwards sequence happened with each of them. Behind Gurjin, his oldest friend in the circle, he saw his mother’s death, his torture at the castle, but also his days as a guard with Rian and Mira, and those with his sisters and his parents at the swamp, a life filled with discrete instances of happiness and sorrow. Behind Onica he saw the loss of Tavra, but also hundreds of memories of their time together, and before that, her girlhood learning to sail with Ethri and Tae, a childhood filled with music and dancing on the sunlit sea. 

As the flames died down, his vision of the withered, bone-dry Thra rose to the surface of his thoughts yet again. And although it was a vision of the future, his mind no longer recognized it as such. Instead, he saw behind it all the days of his life, of his friends’ lives, of the lives of thousands of Gelfling of ages past, days that were green and deep brown and red. In the barren Thra of his vision, he saw not the future but the past coming into the now, and it was more than enough.

******

The long dusk ended in nightfall, but the Sisters were out of phase and no moonlight shone on the dark forest below. Beneath a night sky lit by stars alone, Raunip watched as the seven Gelfling took their places in the circle, one Gelfling from each clan, their unity now a reminder that their past divisions had been needless. Seven small fires, one behind each Gelfling, and for a moment Raunip was brought back two thousand trine or more, to the Gelfling when they were young, dancing around the fires at night, still free from the meddling of Skeksis or urSkeks. In the center of the circle, the crystal shard that he had secured so long ago was suspended from surrendered weapons repurposed for sculpture.

The ritual would be strong. The Gelfling had managed it spectacularly, and with only mild prodding from himself and GraGoh.

The song began, the song that the Gelfling had found together, with help from an urRu and a Skeksis and the son of Mother Aughra and the stars. The blue flames roared up and down the rocky walls of Stone-in-the-Wood. And with the blue flames, the low glow within the crystal shard grew into a pulsing core of white light, until it could no longer be contained but reverberated out into the night. 

Bathed in the light of the crystal shard, Raunip held his hands up to his friends urGoh and skekGra. The urRu and the Skeksis took one last look at their respective faces, the face of the other, the face of the self, and then each raised a hand to Raunip. He pulled them into the dreamfast. Together, they swam to the pinned memory, extracted from Gyr’s, of a whole urSkek beyond the far horizons of the Silver Sea. Raunip smiled a gentle smile at urGoh and skekGra, a brief smile reflecting hundreds of trine of hope, and then entrusted them to that memory as he turned his focus towards the light of the crystal shard. 

The light from a single shard was not enough to penetrate the heavens and lead the way to the home of the urSkeks. But Raunip had Thra within him as well as the stars. He felt the hum of the Gelflings’ song from without the dreamfast, and he let it reverberate through his body. The vibrations carried his mind up into the night sky, past the Sisters, past the Suns, into the stars, until he found his destination and latched on. He turned his mind back down through the heavens to the crystal shard, and let the light flow through him.

The bridge was made. In waking life, urGoh and SkekGra flashed and flickered in the light of the crystal shard, until they became the whole creature of light that they had once been. They hovered, for a moment, above the ground of Thra, their home in exile for almost two thousand trine, before their body warped into a single ray that was drawn into the light of the shard. Raunip felt them cross through him, a bridge to carry them home. And then, it was done.

Without any partners, the dreamfast ended itself and Raunip’s body and mind fell to the ground of Thra, spent. Beyond his closed eyelids, he sensed the flickering of blue flames against the stone. 

He opened a single eye in panic. No arm, no leg responded to his commands. He had overspent himself, and now his end was near, before he could take the Darkening back from the Gelfling girl.

He needed help. The young Stonewood would certainly have come to his aid, but he was still entranced in the circle of seven. The guards monitoring the dreamfast had become completely absorbed in the blue flames, squinting in wonder at the symbols that were taking form in the living rock.

Raunip had worked for hundreds of trine to get to this moment: transformed the Conqueror into the Heretic, dream-stitched clues in ancient texts, dug through the dark caverns of Thra in search of the true crystal shard. And he had succeeded. He had accomplished what he had always wanted to do more than anything else: he had sent an urSkek home. He had provided the Gelfling with the roadmap to heal the rest of the urSkeks, to send them home, to save Thra. 

And yet his last moments would be filled with regret, if he could not return to the young Gelfling girl and take the Darkening from her. For a cold, torturous while, he lay on the chill earth, despairing of his imminent return to it. And then, in the midst of the coldness encroaching upon him, something warm and hand-shaped on his head.

“Raunip! Are you all right?”

Somehow, she was there. She had found him. She crouched over him now, her hand gently stroking his head. 

“Deet… how?”

“Your mother sent me. She said you wouldn’t be able to make it back to the cave where I was waiting. What does that mean?”

“You know what it means,” he said gently, and, summoning his strength, placed his hand, warm like the earth at midday, atop hers. Before she could speak again, he entered the dreamfast and took the Darkening from her one last time. The Darkening was the absence of love and life, but Raunip was not frightened by it. His whole life he had spent in service of love and life, and the Darkening was no threat to his spirit. As for his body, that was beyond saving.

“I’m in your debt, Raunip,” Deet said. “What can I do to help you?”

“You owe me nothing. Live your span of trine, and may they be spent in peace.”

A few moments later, stretched out on Lore’s back looking down over the town, Raunip watched the blue flames die down and the Gelfling awaken from their trance. No sooner did the young Stonewood awaken than Deet was in his arms, nearly knocking him clean over again. _A story I have seen many times, but a good one._

“All right Lore,” he said weakly. “It’s time to go home.” They turned away from Stone-in-the-Wood and wandered into the dark shadows of the Endless Forest.

******

The moonless night was dark, but the blue flames roaring from Stone-in-the-Wood were more than enough light to see by. Brea stumbled along through the woods, leaning on Deet, with Hup clearing stray branches and brambles out of their way. She tried not to notice the crushed and torn bodies of landstriders and Spitters and Gelfling that littered the woods.

Deet herself seemed remarkably calm at the possibility that she might miss her one and only chance to be cleansed of the Darkening forever. Brea, on the other hand, had a sick feeling in her stomach, a mix of mental fatigue and physical illness from the lingering shock to her system, and her anxiousness over Deet’s fate was only making it worse.

“Maybe you should just go ahead,” Brea said. “I’ll be all right.”

“We’ll make it in time,” said Deet, tightening her grip around Brea’s waist as she helped her over a fallen tree trunk. 

“You keep saying that, but…” Brea’s sentence cut off with her steps, as, for the second time that evening, the sky exploded with light. Deet shut her sensitive eyes and turned her head away, but Brea kept her face fixed to the sky. 

The flash intensified into a beam, the beam emitted a burst, and suddenly, there in the sky above the blue flames, shone a new light, like a sun or a moon but neither. A light like an hourglass but also a beast, but also a wise creature. 

“What is that?” asked Deet, still shielding her eyes. “I thought I had finally figured out how many things there are in the sky.”

“Here,” said Brea. She ripped off a piece of cloth from her ruined leggings and handed it to Deet to cover her eyes with. “Look closely. We’ve seen its likeness before.”

Deet lifted the fabric to her eyes with her free hand, and turned her face to the sky. “An urSkek,” she said, gripping Brea’s dress in surprise. Brea tottered at Deet’s shifted weight, but leaned into her uninjured leg and managed to keep both their balance and the embrace. 

“Brother Raunip must have been successful,” Brea said. “The Heretic and the Wanderer…” 

Brea’s words were cut off once more by a flash of white light bursting through night sky, so bright that it lingered in her eyes even after it was gone. But while the afterimage of the flash lingered, the urSkek was nowhere to be found. 

“…they've gone home,” Brea finished simply. 

“They did it,” said Deet, her voice small in Brea’s ear. “They’re safely home, after all those years.”

 _They’re home. The plan worked. Which means…_ “Deet, go,” said Brea, dropping gently to the ground on her good leg. “Please just go ahead and find Raunip. Hup will stay and help me, right Hup?”

Hup nodded. “Deet hurry,” he said, his eyes full of fear for his friend. At last, blessedly, Deet ran ahead, her keen eyes able to navigate the forest which, as the blue flames dimmed down, was slowly returning to darkness.

“Use stick,” said Hup, once Deet had disappeared from view. He foraged a handful of twigs and branches from the forest floor, then rejected them one by one. “Too skinny. Too short. Too pointy. Here. This one good.”

“This is perfect Hup, thank you,” Brea said, grabbing onto what was, indeed, a very good walking stick, but she couldn’t manage to pull herself up.

She took another minute to try to settle the sick feeling in her stomach. _Deet will be fine_ , she thought. _That’s one problem down._ She closed her eyes and concentrated on the coolness of the forest soil beneath her knees where she knelt, smudging her now-bare left leg and the remaining fabric on her right. She thought of the urSkek above her and of Thra beneath her, and how the two had come to understand each other in the end. 

Brea’s breath calmed, her heart stopped racing. But her stomach did not get the chance to settle before she opened her eyes only to notice a fallen Gelfling soldier, his midsection a mess of blood and torn fabric and torn skin, lying within arms reach. A flash came to her again, of the Garthim above her, not the one that had crushed her leg, but the one whose belly she had torn apart. She felt its blood spraying upon her, the blood that still stained her hair, her dress, her face.

Brea squeezed her eyes shut and clutched at the soil with her free hand until the coolness of it spread through her body and into her mind. She calmed. Then she pulled herself up with the stick, and followed Hup towards the dying blue flames. 

By the time Brea and Hup arrived at the site of the ritual, much of the blue flame had died down, although the the last of it still clung to the walls of the palace. The dreamfasters still sat in their circle. Their faces, faces of her friends and family, remained fixed to the stars, waiting for the last of the blue flames to die away. All of Stone-in-the-Wood was covered in dream-etchings.

Deet and Brother Raunip were nowhere to be seen, but Naia was just arriving on a landstrider. Brea hobbled her way over to the palace, where a group of Gelfling crowded around the throne, staring at the symbols on the wall behind it.

“What does it say?” asked Naia.

 _When single shines the triple sun, what was sundered and undone shall be whole, the two made one, by Gelfling hand, or else by none_.

“It refers to to Great Conjunction, obviously,” said Brea, surprised at the irritation in her tone. Of all the feelings she expected to feel at this moment, annoyance at a prophecy was not one of them. “But there must be some kind of mistake, because the next one is not for a hundred and eleven trine.”

“Maybe we just have to wait a hundred and eleven trine,” said Naia. There was exhaustion in her voice, but also acceptance. “But it does say that we’re going to do it in the end.” 

“You could read it that way,” said Brea with a sigh. 

Naia placed a hand on Brea’s shoulder. “I have to go to inn. My mother’s there. But I’ll check up on your leg later.” Brea placed her hand on top of Naia’s and squeezed it once before the other woman exited the palace. 

Around her, Gelfling came and went. Only a handful of the many soldiers were literate, and they read snippets of the walls out loud to their companions. Bits of prophecy drifted in and out of Brea’s ears, but her mind bounced back and forth among the urSkek in the sky and the verse before her and the soil of Thra smeared on her knees. She tried to imagine the space of a hundred and eleven trine as a very small one in the grand scheme of the universe. 

But her heart kept bringing her back to the black blood staining her clothes, to the fearful moments beneath the Garthim, to those who had died in the forest that day, and to all those who had died before that day or, worse, been drained. The sick feeling in her stomach remained. And so she stood until the last of the flames died down and the ritual ended, and within a few moments, he was by her side.

“You found me,” she said, her eyes still on the wall before her.

“I heard that the main prophecy was in the throne room, so I figured you’d be here.”

“Did you see Deet? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s with Rian. She’s fine. How are you?”

“I killed a Garthim,” she said, shifting her eyes from the prophecy to the dried black blood on her hands.

“I heard.”

“You were right,” she said. “About killing. I didn’t like it.” Her voice cracked at the end of her sentence. She gripped the walking stick and tried to remain steady. But when Kylan offered his hand, she took it, and let him pull her in close. One of his hands rested beneath her wing joint, the other in her hair, and she closed her eyes, just like that night in the library. What had she been so troubled by that day? Boring meetings?

“I was scared I would never see you again,” he said quietly into her hair. 

“What are we going to do?” she asked, tears finally coming. “I really thought that this would be over. First, when we found the shard. Then when we figured out the song. There was always a plan. Always another obvious step forward. And now…”

“We did have this discussion once,” he said softly.

“What, find another way or die trying?”

“It’s just slightly modified. Now we know the other way. And yes, we’re going to die in the process, eventually. But also we have more hope than ever before. And we only have to do one thing.”

“Survive,” she said. She bit back her tears and opened her eyes, letting them wander over the rest of the dream-etchings on the palace wall, the ones she had ignored before.

“But there’s still a chance we can fix it in our lifetimes,” she said. “We still haven’t read all of the other inscriptions. What if this isn’t a timeline, just a deadline? Maybe it just has to be done _before_ the next Great Conjunction.”

“Maybe,” he said, his eyes fixed on the prophecy. But she could read his true thoughts in his voice.

“You don’t think so.”

“Let me be the one who works on accepting the inevitable,” he said, turning his face back to hers, “and you be the one who keeps making plans to stave it off, and we’ll try to balance each other out.”

“Does this mean you’re coming back to Ha’rar with me?” she asked. _Ha’rar. The Skeksis won’t let Ha’rar last out the trine, let alone another hundred and eleven of them_. “Or…to the desert or wherever?” 

He tensed slightly. “You want me to follow you wherever?” he asked. 

_Oh Thra, is that what I'm asking? I can't ask that. His closest friends are all going to be in Sog, I can’t ask him to give up all of that just to be with me._ “Sorry,” she said. She straightened up and wiped his shirt where the Garthim blood from her face had rubbed off onto it. “I think that question got away from me a little.” 

She reached for her walking stick, but before she could grab it, he had pulled her back into his arms.

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I know that you’re upset about the prophecy, but to me, for some reason, the future seems wide open right now. I’m ready for whatever. Or wherever.”

 _He does seem different. A little more at peace than before._ “What happened in the dream-circle?”

“The twice-dream was…odd,” he said. “But good. I think you would have liked it.”

“Will you show me later?”

“It was mostly my own memories. My family and everything. Just with a new perspective.”

“Oh,” she said. His own memories. _Those_ memories. They’d discussed this before, back when they were chasing down Gyr’s memory of the urSkek song. _Not yet._

“But yes,” he said with a smile. “As soon as we get back to Ha’rar or the desert or wherever.”

She tried to think of something meaningful to say in response, but she was, at this point, very worn down. “Good,” she said simply. She felt his hand tracing her cheek and met him for a kiss before breaking away and resting her head against him again. 

Brea closed her eyes and tried, for once, to root her mind in the present moment, instead of letting it run along its usual course of ever-evolving possibilities and contingency plans. She felt the fabric Kylan’s shirt beneath her cheek, still slightly damp from her tears, and she felt him breathing along with her breath. She was alive. They were alive. And maybe _survive_ wasn’t such a bad plan if it meant _survive together_.

One hundred and eleven trine was a long time to wait for the healing of Thra, but within those trine she would have plenty of time to seek her own answers, about urSkeks and death and other worlds, and about which things were knowable and which were unknowable. And then both the Crystal and the questions would be left to another generation of Gelfling, and she would just have to accept that.

“Rian contacted the other hearths through the flames in the Crucible,” Kylan said after a few moments had passed. “It seems like this main prophecy was etched in each capital, but the secondary ones are only here in Stone-in-the-Wood. So we’re going to have to record them before we leave.”

“You’re trying to make me feel better by dangling a cataloguing task in front of me, aren’t you?” she replied, turning her head to peek through the open doors leading outside. The entire town center was riddled with dream-etchings. 

“Is it working?” he asked.

“Definitely yes,” she replied. She pulled back out of his arms and almost fell. He picked up her walking stick from where it had been leaning against the throne and handed it to her.

“Do you think you can do a rough dream-etch of each of the inscriptions?” she asked. “That should only take a few hours, right? And I can start sketching this one in detail, and then when we get back…” she trailed off. _I am better at thinking about others' needs now._ “But first you have to go see Naia. She’s at the inn. You know what happened, right?” 

“I do. I’ll go see her, and then I’ll start dream-etching.”

“We’ll need another copy of the etchings for them to bring to Great Smerth. In fact, if we have several different people do dream-etchings and then make copies for everyone to compare, we’ll have greater reliability.” She used her free hand to create a rough frame outlining the back wall of the palace. “And of course we’ll need to start by mapping out a grid so that we know where each inscription came from.”

“That,” he began, “sounds like something you can coordinate with your sister, the All-Maudra, who probably also very much wants to see you.”

“Right,” she said. She reached for his hand once more, and held it tightly. She took one last look at the prophecy before they turned away and exited the palace. 

In Stone-in-the-Wood, Gelfling of seven clans, Podlings, and Arathim came and went, some examining the dream-etchings, while others reunited with friends, tended to landstriders, tossed scraps of food to stray fizzgigs. _One hundred and eleven trine._ A long time. But the sick feeling in her stomach had lightened, even if hadn’t fully disappeared. 

Brea dropped Kylan off at the inn, where healers tended to the wounded and friends and family and fellow soldiers tended to the dead. She then turned back to the busy hearth, bustling with the activity of the living. Her eyes fell upon Seladon, standing among the warm fires surrounding the Crucible, and she walked over to her sister with a twisted but steady step.

******

The night was moonless, so skekSa marked the passage of time by the movement of the stars as she waited on the shore of the Black River to rendezvous with the rest of the raiding party. The plan had been to defeat the Gelfling at Stone-in-the-Wood, and then sail on to Ha’rar to sack the capital fresh off of their victory. Obviously that plan was no longer a possibility.

She heard a rippling in the river behind her but did not bother to look. The rippling was followed by the sound of one wet limb slapping against the rocky bank, then five more.

“You were spying on me and skekUng that day on the boat,” said skekSa, once urSan had pulled herself onto the shore. 

“I was.” UrSan’s answers were always so terse, as if her gentle voice would run out of breath if she tried to say more than four words at once.

“That was very sneaky,” skekSa said. 

“The Gelfling have their prophecy.”

“Did they tell you what it is?”

“I heard some of it, yes.” She paused. And then continued to pause. 

_Blast these urRu and the endless prodding that they require._ “Are you going to tell me what it is?” skekSa asked at last. 

“The Gelfling will heal the Crystal someday. And us with it, if we’re still alive.” 

“Who says we need to be healed?” snapped skekSa, although the moment she said it, she felt, against her own conscious mind, an odd tinge of regret.

Moments passed in silence. Neither skekSa nor urSan looked at the other, but they were so close that skekSa could feel the heat being drawn off of her body and towards her still-damp other half, as if their body temperatures were seeking an equilibrium. _That’s an odd property of being one person in two bodies._ Why hadn’t she noticed before? 

“Did you see them?” skekSa asked. She didn’t bother to specify who she was referring to, nor did she have to. 

“GraGoh?” asked urSan.

“GraGoh,” said skekSa. “A name I haven’t heard in so very long.”

“Like SaSan.” 

“I’m not going to be able to win back the Sifa, am I?”

“I don’t think so. At least, not without a genuine change of heart.”

 _Heart, bah._ “It seems foolish now,” skekSa said. “Basking in their adulations. I thought I was so much better than the castle Skeksis, but I was no different. Playing with my little pets as if I were some mighty god. But it’s all just a silly game.”

“Not so silly,” said urSan. “A lot of people got hurt.”

SkekSa grunted. She might feel foolish about her own delusions, but it would a long time before she would bother to feel sorry for the Gelfling. 

“So are you going back?” asked urSan. “To skekSo and the others?”

SkekSa could just imagine the wailing and lamentations at the castle when news of the prophecy reached the rest of the Skeksis. The mere thought of it annoyed her. The Gelfling annoyed her, the Skeksis annoyed her, this whole cursed planet annoyed her. And yet, in the flash of the crystal shard, watching GraGoh unite again, all the while sensing urSan nearby, she had, briefly, not felt annoyed, or angry, or bored, or lost. Maybe there was a path she could find where she wasn’t constantly coated in a thin layer of wretchedness.

Shadows drew closer in the night, and there was a rustling of bushes. The others at last. But as the shadows grew closer skekSa saw that only a single one of her fellows had bothered to come to their planned meeting point. 

“SkekUng,” she said. “Where are the others?”

“They have…strategically retreated ahead of us.”

“Ha.” _Cowards and fools._

“My lord Mariner, we must hurry back to the castle and regroup with the others. We may have lost this day, but we still have twice seven Garthim at the castle, and more can be made at will. The crone cannot stop them all. Whatever this prophecy is, nothing will come of it. The might of the Skeksis united will rein in the Gelfling and…” 

SkekUng continued his monologue, but skekSa’s attention faded rapidly. She felt the currents of air between herself and urSan, felt the coolness of the riverwater despite her heavy jacket, as if it were her skin that was damp. _Odd_ , she thought. _I wonder what else I could notice._

“No,” she said, interrupting skekUng’s declamation on the might and the inevitability of the Skeksis. 

“What do you mean no?” he asked, taken aback by her interruption, which was quite odd, considering it was well within her character. 

“You do what you want,” she said, “but I don’t care about the Gelfling anymore.”

“But surely you care about securing the eternal majesty of the Skeksis.”

“No, I don’t care about that either.”

He seemed baffled, as if nothing else could matter. “What then?”

“I want…” she began, with a brief glance to urSan for the first time since the latter had climbed onto the back of the river. “I want to feel like myself again.” She looked back at skekUng and shrugged. 

SkekSa walked away towards the river, urSan following behind her. With a nod of the head, skekSa gestured to the boat. urSan heaved herself onboard, dripping enough water to soak the deck. SkekSa took no notice. 

Together, they drifted up the river and, eventually, out onto the Silver Sea. Neither was heard of again in the Skarith Land for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe we're here already! Only one more to go. Thanks to everyone who's read this far!


	15. (5.0) A Night Lit Only By Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said that Chapter 9 was the longest chapter but during editing this chapter had other ideas ;)

Part 5.0 A Night Lit Only By Stars  
_Permission to stay. Saying good-bye. A horrible thing in common. Unnecessary trappings. Six maudras and one man. Encounters on grid block A-19. Of Thra and of the stars._  
POVs: Tavra, Naia, Amri, Seladon, Rian, Deet, Aughra

******

The moonless night was full of stars, as numerous as the multitude of Arathim minds to which Tavra was intimately connected. Ever since earlier in the day, when she had interacted directly with the Ascendancy for the first time, the pull of their collective minds felt stronger than ever before. Tavra had spent the last month perfecting her connection to other Gelfling, so that she could project her old body in their mutual minds and act like nothing had changed. _But of course things have changed._

The thought was a threat, and Tavra shook it away.

The stars, for all their merits, did not provide enough light for the tasks still before them that night: recovering the dead, preparing them for burial, healing the injured. And, of course, transcribing the words of prophecy which, as Onica had predicted weeks ago, now covered the walls of Stone-in-the-Wood. And, as the love her life had an odd penchant for setting fires, Tavra now perched on Onica's shoulder as the latter, torch in hand, lit the lamps of Stone-in-the-Wood. Tavra scuttled closer to Onica’s neck, both to avoid the heat of the fire and also to press closer to her skin, to root herself in its scent, and closer to her throat, to root herself in the voice that vibrated from it as she hummed a quiet song. 

_You have had much time with her since we joined_ , came the voice of the Threader whose body Tavra shared. _Has it been enough?_

 _Enough?_ thought Tavra in reply. _How can there ever be enough?_

_I cannot answer that_ , said the Threader. _I still do not understand very well what it is like to be…separate from others of one’s kind. And yet I am afraid the time has come for you to separate from the Gelfling._

_What do you mean?_ Tavra asked.

 _The Ascendancy has decided. We leave tonight._ The Threader led Tavra through the Arathim network, and flashes of intention from a thousand minds popped into hers, coalescing into a unified plan of action. Thousands of Arathim, Spitters and Threaders alike, seeping into the crevices of Thra, passing through the Mountains of Grot one last time, then sinking deep into the earth, to a world inside their world.

 _When your mind joined with mine_ , said the Threader, _I had, for the first time, a strong sense of I. And I repented of what the Arathim did to you. So this I is happy to share this small body with you as a penance. But in the end, I am Arathim. We are Arathim. We must go where the Ascendancy wills us to go._

In the will of the Ascendancy, Tavra felt the cool stillness of the deep places of Thra, and she was tempted by the sheltering security of crevices of stone. But once again, she shook the thought away. _We can’t just leave without explaining to the Gelfling_ , she thought blindly into the network. _Please. My sister is their leader, we need to warn her._

Tavra felt her mind slip once again into Threader and into Spitter, into body after body, until the voices of the many emerged as single voice.

 _We are in debt to the Gelfling_ , came the voice of the Ascendancy once more. _We will grant this explanation. But we must do so quickly before the Skeksis have the chance to return with more of their abominations._

Tavra carefully stoked Onica’s cheek as she always did when she wanted to attach, waited for affirmation, and then made the connection. In their joint minds, the image of Tavra’s Gelfling body hovered in the air beside the ladder on which Onica was currently perched, a reminder that their joint visions of Tavra's old body were only ever an illusion. _We have to get to Seladon_ , Tavra said. _It’s an emergency._

Onica stopped humming, and the peace that had been in her eyes drained away. Tavra knew that Onica must have sensed through their connection something of the Ascendancy’s intentions. _I’m sorry_ , said Tavra. _We have to talk to Seladon. It’s our only chance to stop the Ascendancy._

_Do you want to stop it, Tavra?_

Tavra realized then that it was not the Ascendancy’s inentions that Onica had read.

 _It’s okay_ , said Onica. _This transformation… it affects me and your sisters too, but it affects you first. You get to be the one who decides how you want to live._

Tavra wanted nothing more to put her arms around Onica at that moment, but, despite the mental projection of her body, she knew that it wouldn’t work. They’d managed to approximate holding hands, but even that much took so much concentration and mental energy. _I am not Gelfling anymore_ , thought Tavra before she could hide it from Onica. _No_ , she tried again. _I am. I am and I’m not. I…_

Onica's smile was slow and only half-reached her eyes.

 _Come on then_ , she said in their joint minds. _Let’s go talk to Seladon._

A few minutes later, they had reached the Crucible, where several of the maudras and Rian stood, coordinating their next steps. Tavra found Seladon off to the side, discussing something with Brea.

“Brea, it will only take you a few minutes to change into a less abused outfit.”

“I need to focus on transcribing the prophecy. It doesn't matter what I look like while I do it. Every second counts.”

“At least remove your stockings, they’re all tattered and…”

“Seladon,” said Onica. “Tavra needs to speak with you. It's urgent.”

“All right Brea,” said Seladon. “Just go. And be careful.” Brea gave Seladon a quick hug before hobbling off into the night, muttering about how they should have brought more scholars along in addition to the soldiers. 

Tavra couldn’t help notice how much better her two sisters were getting along with each other, and maybe they didn’t need her to keep the peace anymore and maybe she could surrender to the thousands of voices and dig deep into the earth, and… _Stop_ , she said to herself. _Just stop._

Seladon placed her hand on Onica's shoulder and Tavra scuttled up her sister’s arm to her neck. She made the connection, and navigated their joint minds so that it seemed to both sisters that they stood side by side, Tavra in her old Gelfling body.

This time, though, they were joined in their shared mental space by a projection of the Ascendancy, a mass of Spitter legs and jaws and eyes and thoraces, a jumble of shadows against the shadow of the moonless night.

“Gelfling,” it uttered from its multitudes, “the Arathim are eternally grateful to you for coming to our aid on the field of battle today.”

“Oh," said Seladon, controlling her surprise at their unexpected companion remarkably well. “We must give you our thanks as well. Together we put an end to more of those abominations than either of us could have done alone.”

“But there will be more,” said the Ascendancy, “That is why the Arathim must flee. We will go east, back to the Mountains of Grot one last time, and from there, through the depths, to the heart of Thra, to the world inside our world.”

“I don't understand,” said Seladon. “Why not stay with the Gelfling and fight?”

“We cannot bear those abominations, ripped of our flesh and twisted into undead monsters. And where the Gelfling go, the abominations will follow.”

“But surely the Skeksis will send them after the Arathim too,” said Tavra. “Even if we flee.” _We?_

“The Gelfling does not understand." The voice of the Ascendancy was like shadow grating against stone. “The prophecy does not say that the Skeksis will meet their end at the hands of the _Arathim_. Where the Gelfling go, the abominations will follow.”

Tavra spoke. “You mean the Skeksis will try to exterminate the Gelfling.” She recalled Onica’s vision on the shores of the Silver Sea. _Oh Tavra, there were no Gelfling._

“If the Skeksis succeed in exterminating the Gelfling,” spoke the Ascendancy, “then the Arathim will be helpless against the Garthim. Without you we cannot fight them. We are blind.”

Seladon's voice shot through their joint minds. Tavra was both surprised and comforted by the strength of its will. “The Gelfling will not allow the Skeksis to destroy us. No matter what.”

“You must endure against them for over one hundred trine,” rasped the Ascendancy. “That is a very long time for Gelfling.”

Tavra felt Seladon's mind working through several possibilities, navigating negotiations with the skill that Tavra always had to remind her that she had. “The Skeksis are a threat to all of Thra,” she said, “and if the Gelfling do not stop them, no one will. One day, the blight will come to you, no matter where you go. But if you at least sent a contingent to the Claw Mountains, we can work together and…”

“No. The Arathim will stay together.”

 _And I am Arathim._ “I’ll have to go with them, Seladon,” Tavra said.

“No,” Seladon said. “At least let my sister stay.”

“The Arathim will stay together.”

Once again, Tavra felt the coolness of deep, dark, damp places, felt the pull of a thousand Arathim, drawing her towards this great union of minds that was the Ascendancy. _I already got more time with the people I love than I should have_ , Tavra thought. _More time than any soldier who falls on the battlefield gets to have with their loved ones after death. And it’s not so easy to be among Gelfling when I know I will never truly be one of them again._

But she had only just figured out how to connect with Brea, and she was getting along with Seladon better than ever before, and Onica had never hesitated in her loyalty despite the very odd situation that their relationship was in _and I want to stay with them._

She felt her words echo through countless bodies, through countless minds, into countless crevices in the dark places of Thra. She was, for the first time since she became an Arathim, completely one in mind with the entirety of the Arathim, all of them at once. But it was to last for only an instant, before she felt herself sucked back towards the Threader’s body and Seladon. As she flew, however, she saw behind her literal sparks of memory lighting up in the brains of the Arathim that she passed. 

Four sevens Gelfling, risking their lives to save the Spitters in the Forest. Before that, Naia in the Tomb of Relics, throwing a rock against the Garthim to distract it from the Spitters. The Stonewoods that the Threaders had controlled, many of whom had gone to their demise before the Crystal. And, although small and scarce, here and there were Tavra’s memories, a Gelfling’s memories, of her days with her sisters, her mothers, the woman she loved.

Once again, the images in her mind snapped back to Seladon, the Ascendency, and her own Gelfling body standing in a dark corner of Stone-in-the-Wood, in the shadows of a moonless night, even though to the eyes of other Gelfling the All-Maudra stood alone, with a Threader wrapped around her face. For a moment, all was silent, and then at last, the Ascendancy spoke.

“It is prudent for us to stay in contact with the Gelfling and the other wise creatures of Thra. We will allow some Threaders to remain on the surface to monitor the situation. If, when things settle down, we deem it safe, we will send a colony to the Claw Mountains to aid in the fight against the Skeksis.”

“Thank you," said Seladon.

Before it disengaged, the Ascendancy loosed one more string of words into the shadowy night. “And the Gelfling's sister can stay with her.”

 _I can stay. I want to stay_. Knowing her own heart, at least for now, Tavra let her mind linger for a moment in quiet relief along with Seladon’s. 

“Well?” Onica asked. Her voice was low but Tavra knew her well enough to hear the grief and worry in it.

“I can stay,” said Tavra, through Seladon. 

Onica moved so fast that Tavra felt her arms wrapping around Seladon’s body before either her mind or Seladon’s could register the movement. Tavra felt Seladon’s momentary confusion melt into understanding, and her sister let Tavra have control of their shared body long enough to wrap her arms back. 

“I’m so glad,” Onica said. She hadn’t let herself cry this entire time, but now the tears came. Tavra held her tightly and they stayed together until the tears faded.

“What about the Arathim?” Onica said as she pulled away, wiping her eye with a sleeve. 

“They’re going to leave some Threaders,” said Seladon, “but largely go into hiding. They… they believe that the Skeksis will not rest until the Gelfling threat is gone.”

“I don’t think they’re wrong,” said Tavra aloud through Seladon. “So now we really have to decide about what Maudra Mera was arguing that night on the Plains. It’s come to the point where it’s kill or be killed.”

“No it’s not," said Onica with that touch of certainty that she always put into her voice whenever she was arguing with someone. “Don’t be silly, Tavra.” 

_Less than minute of relief that I’m staying and I’m already silly_. “Onica, you had the vision yourself,” Tavra said. “A barren Thra, the Gelfling gone.”

“The thing about visions of the future is that there is always more future beyond them,” said Onica. “Before the ritual, I had a flash, of the blighted Thra growing green once more. Leaves sprouting on barren branches, grasses rising again from where they had been wilted, brown dust moistened into black soil.”

“But the wasteland will still come to pass before that?” asked Seladon.

“It may be a long time until Thra is healed,” said Onica, “and yes, I believe the wasteland will come to pass before it’s over. But in the end, I think we make it. If the only way to heal Thra is for a Gelfling to do it, and if I saw Thra healed again, then that’s it. We make it.”

“But we don’t know what actions we have to take along the way. Maybe the healed Thra is the future we get from eradicating the Skeksis,” said Tavra. “Maybe that’s the only way.”

“You _two_ ,” said Onica. “Such pessimists. Think. There are countless options. Tavra, you’re kind of an Arathim now. Try to figure out how to use the network to jam the Garthim. If they can do it to the Arathim, then maybe it can go two ways. And we already have plans to hide away in the swamp and the Crystal Sea. So stop moping and _plan_.”

“There was a potion,” said Tavra, after a moment. “Seladon, you remember. The potion that the Skeksis used to dissolve the Garthim.”

Tavra felt Seladon’s mind drift back to the night on the Plains, trying to hone in on the potion in the Skeksis’ hand. “Yes, I do. It was… yellow? That’s all I remember.”

“Maybe we could figure out what it was. We’d have to experiment, but it would make a good weapon.”

“See? We can do this,” said Onica. “Today Brother Raunip did the impossible and sent an urSkek back to its home across the stars. Before the ritual today, he told me that he had never given up, not even after two thousand trine. What’s one hundred and eleven compared to that?”

“All right, all right,” said Seladon. “Maybe there’s hope. I’ll talk to the other maudras, and we’ll start making plans. It doesn’t hurt to make plans.”

Tavra disengaged from Seladon and scuttled over to Onica. She didn’t link to her mind, instead nestling back into her neck, under her hair, once again feeling the vibrations as Onica hummed a nameless tune and lit the lamps. _I may not be a Gelfling ever again_ , she thought. _But this is good too._ If there was one thing she had learned from Onica, it was that the future was partially knowable, but never fully. _But I know at least that this is where I belong right now._

******

Naia sat alone on a single chair in a storage room of the inn at Stone-in-the-Wood, watching the gentle starlight falling through the window onto her mother’s shroud. She tried to mentally organize the hundreds of tasks before her, while packing up her own grief and tucking it away to be dealt with later. The other maudras would be meeting soon and she would need to join them.

 _Just hold it together for now_ , she thought. Sometime later, maybe tomorrow when she got back home, she could find some time by herself to fall apart somewhere. _Alone, apparently_ , she thought, trying not feel bitter. How long had it been since the ritual ended? 

She knew Kylan was there before he entered the room. He made enough noise with his footsteps to be noticed, but waited for her to acknowledge him rather than intrude with a knock or a greeting. _At least_ someone _came to see me. Even though he won’t be there when I fall apart back home either._

“I’m riding out at dawn to bring her home,” she said, keeping her eyes on her mother. “Just a small group. Mera and Rian will lead the rest back to the swamp later in the day.”

“I should be there for the funeral,” Kylan said, coming to stand beside her. Still seated, Naia took his arm and leaned into it. _I really wish you were going to be there for the funeral._

“Don’t be silly,” she said instead. “Mom would want you to go to Ha’rar.” 

“We’ll probably have to evacuate to Wellspring sooner than later. There's little chance the Skeksis will let Ha’rar stand for much longer.” 

“You’re going to bring all the books and stuff with you, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The plan is find a cavern or something in the Claw Mountains and relocate the entire library there. It’ll be a lot of work. But a good distraction.” 

“Good,” she said. “You belong up there with all of that literature and culture.”

“There’s literature and culture in Sog too,” he said. He smiled his gentle smile and placed his hand on hers where it rested on his arm. 

“That’s not the same,” Naia said with a short laugh. “We don’t have books or, like, mathematics or anything.”

“You still sing songs and count the days like they do in Ha’rar,” he said. “It’s different, but it’s just as good.”

Naia smiled. “All right, we’re all very cultured in Sog. Now if only we had princesses that people fell in love with in Sog too. Maybe we’d get to keep you.”

“Naia, I…”

“I’m _kidding_ ,” she said, squeezing his arm. _Mostly._ She watched his usual smile fade into his serious face, which meant he was going to talk about his own feelings for once.

“I know Brea and I have been together for only a short time,” he said. “But staying with her feels like the right decision. I don’t think I could make any other one right now if I tried.”

 _See_ , thought Naia. _It’s possible to be with someone for only a short time and have it be enough follow them all the way across the Skarith Land._

“But I’m going to miss you and Gurjin and everyone,” Kylan continued. “And, like, trees and rain and things, I guess? I don’t really know much about the desert.”

Naia nodded towards the table in front of her. “Mom was in talks with the Sifa about establishing regular sailing routes between Sog and Cera-Na before, you know, everything that happened today,” she said. “If we still manage to make that happen, then you’ll be able to hop on a ship and come back to Great Smerth if you ever end up missing trees and rain and things too much. Or if things otherwise don’t work out. But things are going to work out.”

“I think so too,” he said, his gentle smile coming back. “But I believe it a little bit more when you say it.”

“That’s sweet,” she said. “But since we’re not fourteen-year-olds dealing with your self-confidence issues anymore, I didn’t think you still needed my pep talks.”

Kylan laughed quietly. “I really did need a lot of pep talks,” he said. “But that’s not it this time.” He paused for longer than a person normally would, which she was used to, and eventually continued with a seemingly random follow-up, which she was also used to.

“Do you remember what you said when we first met and I asked you why you wanted to be friends with me?” he said.

“I was a child,” she answered. “So no, I do not remember.”

“You said _I don’t know._ ”

“That doesn’t seem very memorable.” 

“It was for me. For the first time in my life, there was someone who seemed to think I mattered, and that I mattered just for me, no other reason necessary. When you don’t have any family, that’s hard to come by. And when family says that things are going to work out…"

“…it counts for a little more,” she finished. _Kylan, you are making it very difficult for me to hold it together._

“Now that I have some space I’m starting to realize Maudra Mera was trying her best, but…”

“You don’t have to finish the _but._ ” 

“You’re going to have to get along with Maudra Mera,” he said.

“It might help if you show me her face when she realized you were sharing a room with the All-Maudra’s sister.”

“Is this really the time and place for that?” Kylan asked, glancing over at the table where her mother lay.

“Absolutely," Naia said. “Mom would have wanted to see it too. Who do you think sent Mera to your room with Seladon’s letter in the first place?” She kept a straight face and raised her hand for a dreamfast.

He half-heartedly raised his in response. “Are we really going to do this?” 

She shook her head, but pressed her fingertips against his anyway, avoiding the almost-healed cuts from the night he and Brea had found the urSkek song. _Of course things are going to work out._ She had known Kylan long enough to know that if he had let Brea get past his defenses, she must have earned it. 

“What would you have done if Seladon had died today and Brea suddenly became All-Maudra?” she asked, still staring at their joint fingertips.

Kylan not only took the change of topic in stride, he also saw right through it. _Of course he did._ “Is this really a question about me and Brea?” 

“No,” Naia said, releasing his hand and shifting her gaze back to her mother. _But you know what I mean._

“Oh,” he began. He paused, doing that thing where he calculated the best possible route for the conversation to go. She waited for him to continue, and after a a few moments, he did. 

“If it were Brea, and she became All-Maudra because her mother and two sisters had each died right after each other, and she was isolated from her people by trine after trine of rigid hierarchy, and she didn’t have anyone else to rely on, I would certainly stay by her side, if she wanted me there. But…” 

When he paused this time, she knew it was because he didn’t think she’d like what he had to say next. “Go ahead," said Naia. “Finish the _but_ this time.”

“But if it were you, and you had your father and brother and sisters and an entire clan that loved you, and if I were, say, a peasant orphan from another clan who didn’t like to trouble other people with my problems, I might decide that it would be best for you if I stayed out of your way.”

“So is that why he hasn’t come to see me?” Despite her best efforts to keep her emotions in check, her voice cracked a little when she spoke.

“I don’t know,” Kylan said, placing his hand on her shoulder.

“Yes, you do,” she said, wiping her left eye before any tears could get out. “You always know what other people are feeling.”

“Naia, you are very straightforward, and very decisive, and very brave.”

“Why does that sound like an accusation?”

“It's not,” he said, kneeling down next to her chair. “Those are good things. But sometimes it comes across like you don't need anyone else.” 

“Of course I do.” 

“ _I_ know that. But I’ve known you for eight years.”

“I know I just met him a few weeks ago,” she said, trying to hold her voice steady. “And now I’m a maudra. And it’s too early for our relationship to be this serious. But I can’t imagine going home right now without him there with me.”

“I think you should probably tell him that, then.” 

Now that she had said the words out loud, she knew that he was right. “Yeah, I should,” she said. “See, you may not need my pep talks anymore, but I still need you to sort out my emotional knots for me.”

“This was just a particularly tricky one,” he said with a smile. “You’ve never had to suddently take over for your mother as maudra on the same night you receive a life-altering prophecy about the fate of your people while simultaneously navigating a new relationship before.”

Naia laughed. “That’s true. At least this specific scenario will never happen again.” _And at least I had you here with me for it, even if I have to let you go._

“Why don’t I go get Amri for you?” he said, standing up again. 

“Okay,” she said, still seated in the chair across from her mother’s body. “But don’t send him here. I don’t want to have that discussion here. I’ll find a room upstairs or something.”

“I’ll come see you again before you leave for home.” Kylan placed his hand gently atop her head and she wrapped her arms around his waist. 

“Can I ask you something else before you go?” she said into his shirt.

“Anything."

“You know I don’t like to sing in front of people. Can you play the Song for the Dead now, here? With just us?”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.” He held her for a few more moments before they broke off the embrace. He took out his firca and began to play, the notes echoing through the starlight in the gray stone chamber. 

Naia was so focused on holding back her tears that the notes that came out of her throat were half-voice and half-breath. But the notes he played were steady, and together they made it to the end of the song.

******

Just when Amri had finally worked up the courage to break up with his girlfriend for her own best interest, his face-spider broke up with him first.

Under the starry, moonless sky, Karlak, as exhausted by the day’s events as Amri was, had crawled out of his cloak and tapped him on the shoulder, their signal for initiating the mental link. Amri had been somewhat puzzled, since there was no one he knew of who would be trying to communicate with him by Threader, but, trusting Karlak, he allowed him to wrap his spindly arms around his neck and face and make the connection.

 _The Arathim are leaving the surface world_ , he felt Karlak say in their joint minds. 

_Oh_ , said Amri. That was not what he had been expecting. _Are you going with them?_

_The Arathim will go together._

_All of you?_

_Some Threaders will stay. I am not one of them._

_Oh._ A month previously when he had been fleeing the Spitters in the caverns of Domrak, pushing a flood of Threaders at his feet away in terror as one managed to latch onto his neck, Amri had not been thinking that he would feel a little sorry to see the little monster go away forever someday. And yet here they were.

_We do not choose who goes and stays. The Ascendancy chooses._

_That makes sense, I guess_ , replied Amri. _I mean, it’s how you guys operate._

Amri felt a pulse of regret flow through their shared minds. _I am sorry for what I did to you in Domrak_ , Karlak said. _I know it caused you much fear and pain. I hope with our parting, you will be able to find healing._

Amri _had_ felt much fear and pain, even if he had tried to ignore it. And the fact that Karlak had stayed around to try to make amends had helped a little. But maybe it was time to move on. 

_You don’t need to apologize_ , Amri said. _We were all fooled by the Skeksis. I’m glad we could stand together against them for a little while._

Karlak hesitated before sharing one last thought. _The Arathim, the units of Arathim don’t have names. But thank you for giving me mine. I will remember it. You have changed the way I understand the world._

Amri watched Karlak follow a trail of Threaders off into the night, oddly enough one of his last connections with his old home and his old life. 

_All right_ , he thought when Karlak was gone, _it’s not like I’ll be completely alone from here on out._ The Grottan were a small clan, so no matter which families decided to go north, he would have acquaintances among them. He and Kylan and Brea got along, and the former was too nice to resent him forever for breaking up with his best friend, right? Plus there were mountains up north, and some of them had to have caves. _I’ve always enjoyed rummaging through caves._

But first he had to tell Naia. Right? Maybe it would be better if he wrote a letter. Sure, she couldn’t read, but she had friends who could. Maybe Deet could read her the letter. The two of them had kind of bonded on the long walk from the wasteland to the Valley of the urRu. Amri sat down with his back against a tree and fished around for a piece of paper in his bag.

Amri was about to begin writing when a large figure put itself between him and the light from a nearby campfire. The figure spoke. “What are you doing here?”

 _Oh Thra, literally the worst person possible in this particular moment._ “I was just…”

“Are you trying to break up with my sister by letter?” Gurjin tugged the piece of paper out of Amri’s hand. 

“I was thinking that maybe it would be better for everyone if I just leave.” Amri reached up and took the paper back from Gurjin. “I thought you of all people would agree.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Gurjin. “My sister loves you.” His voice broke halfway through his last sentence. He placed his back against the tree and slid down until he ended up on the ground next to Amri, leaning on him slightly. 

This development surprised Amri quite a bit. He had been fairly certain that Gurjin did not particularly care for him. “Are we… are we friends now?” Amri asked. 

“Do you know the first thought that ran through my head when my mother died?” Gurjin said, staring into the light of the campfire. “I thought _Good. Now the Skeksis can never drain her._ ”

 _Ah. That’s right. The horrible thing we have in common._ “It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” said Amri.

“What was it like for you?”

 _What was it like?_ How to even start? “I think… I think it was a little different than what the Skeksis do at the castle,” Amri said at last. “I was dreamfasting with the crystal vein in Grot when it Darkened, so it just kind of started to suck me in directly. There was nothing I could do to fight it, because… I felt like I was nothing? Like all my twenty trine of loving my friends and family, of finding long-lost books to read, of, I don’t know, eating breakfast everyday, it was as if none of that had ever existed. Like it was foolish of me to have ever believed that it had.”

“Yes, I know that feeling,” Gurjin replied. “And the worst part is that pops up again every now and then at random times. Does that ever happen to you?”

“That time when you had Kylan play that weird note in the Valley of the urRu was one surprising time that it happened.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t know then.”

“It’s okay. Yeah, so that time. Sometimes in the place between being asleep and waking up or being awake and falling sleep. The feeling like you don’t exist. And of course there’s also just a constant, general low-level fear in the corner of my mind that it might happen to me again someday.”

“Yeah, I know that one well.”

“So that doesn’t go away after a while?”

“It hasn’t gone away yet.”

“And it’s happened to so many people,” Amri said, his voice low.

“Sometimes I just want to kill them,” said Gurjin. “The Skeksis. Just all of them. I know Naia is against it, and my mother was too, but Maudra Mera keeps arguing for it and sometimes it's hard not to agree. I don’t even care about the part where it might spread the blight. Like maybe it might be better to let all the Gelfling starve to death from the blight rather than let another single person be drained by the Skeksis.”

Amri wasn’t sure what his answer to that was going to be, but he knew where to start. “Five years ago, a sickness spread through Domrak,” he began. “It happens often enough, with all of us Gelfling closed up together in the caves. But this one was worse than usual, and many people died, including my parents. Maudra Argot kept an eye on me, but there were so many other orphans, and I was old enough to take care of myself. I had been sneaking off to the Tomb of Relics for years, but now I practically moved in. I had spoken with urLii before, but now he became, like, my mentor, I guess? My teacher. The closest thing I had to a parent anyway.” Amri took a deep breath and let it out. “Anyway, I don’t want him to die.” 

But then Amri thought of how terrible it had been to be drained, and how for Gurjin and the others it had been compounded by torture, by having the dark will of the Skeksis forced upon them. “But I don't want any more Gelfling to be drained either,” he said. “I don’t know. Both of those things are true.”

“So no easy answers,” Gurjin said. 

"I guess not.”

“But if we wait for a hundred trine or so, maybe they’ll finally leave. And we’ll finally be free. If we survive. I guess that's the hard answer.”

To be honest, Amri had been so worried about things with Naia that he hadn’t even had the chance to digest the prophecy. With Gurjin’s words, it was finally starting to sink in. The specter of the Darkening, the Skeksis, the drainings at the castle would be part of his life until the day he died and there was nothing he could do about it. “It _is_ a hard answer,” said Amri. He allowed himself to lean into Gurjin a little, the pressure of their upper arms upon each other an unexpected comfort in the moonless night. 

“You know what _is_ an easy answer though?” said Gurjin after a few moments had passed. “You have to at least go talk to Naia in person.”

 _I know. But if I go see her, I won’t be able to leave her, and I’ll just be giving in to my own selfish needs instead of what’s best for her._ “I’m just… I’m just not sure I’m what she needs right now.”

“That’s between you and Naia. But it’s between both of you. So go and talk to her.” Gurjin stood and offered a hand to Amri. Amri took it and let the other man pull him up, but he didn’t let go of Amri’s hand even once they were standing. 

“Thank you for talking to me about the whole draining thing,” he said. “I know it’s hard. I just… there’s no one else who understands even a little. If you come back with us, it might be good to talk about it again sometime.”

“Yeah,” said Amri. He barely had time to register what was happening when Gurjin had pulled him in to an embrace. Amri slowly wrapped his arms around the other man. _So I guess we are friends now._

At that moment Kylan exited the inn, and Amri saw his face shift to worry as he spotted Gurjin and Amri together.

“Hello,” said Kylan. “How’s everything going over here?”

“I’m being nice to him,” said Gurjin. “Look, we’re hugging.”

“I was just briefly concerned that it might have been smothering,” said Kylan, but his smile was teasing.

“I don’t _smother_ people. Geez, Kylan.” 

Kylan turned to Amri, and the teasing smile faded into a regular one. “Naia wants to talk to you. Upstairs, second room to the right.”

For all their talk of friendship and concern over his potential smothering, Amri had a feeling that the two men standing before him would forcibly carry him up there if he didn’t go himself. "All right," he said. "I guess I'll get going then." 

The entrance to the inn was framed by twin torches, casting a hot orange flame into the night, but the inside was lit by some plant Amri had never seen before, a cool yellow light that blended gently in with the starlight shining through the windows. The lights lined the stone wall of the staircase as he ascended, and lit the small graystone bedroom where Naia sat at a table by the window. 

“Hi,” she said. 

“Hi,” he replied. He sat down in the dark wooden chair across from her. It made a loud scraping sound as he pulled it closer to the table. For a while, it was the only sound between them. 

“I’m glad you came,” said Naia at last. “I really wanted to see you.”

It was funny how you could only know someone for a short time and yet know them well enough to hear the simmering anger that they were trying to hide beneath ostensibly neutral words. _No, it’s not just anger. Of course it’s not just anger._

“I’m so sorry,” he said, reaching across the table and taking her hand. “I should have come sooner. I just was trying to figure out the right thing to do.”

Naia tensed but she didn’t let go of his hand. “The right thing to do was to come see your girlfriend after she survived a horrific battle in which her mother was killed.”

“You’re right, I…”

“No, I’m not right.” She wiped a tear with her free hand. “I wasn’t supposed to yell at you.”

Amri took her other hand when she placed it back on the table. _Oh Thra, how am I ever supposed to let go?_ “Look, I just….” He took a deep breath before continuing. “We’ve only known each other a short time, and you have a lot going on, and I was thinking that maybe you don’t need this right now? Your people are going to have to get used to a new maudra. How are they going to react to some person from another clan who they’ve never met before hanging around her all the time? And how are you going to get used to your new job while trying to manage a new relationship? And, like, all of Gelfling society is apparently standing on a precipice that we may not escape from and…”

Naia squeezed both his hands and sighed, which he took as a sign that he had rambled on enough for the moment. 

“I’m just going to put everything out there, because that’s all I know how to do,” she said. “In a few hours from now I’m going to have bring my dead mother home to Great Smerth. I'm going to have to face my father, and my sisters, and our whole clan, and I’m going to have to hold it together. I really really need someone back home who I don't have to hold it together in front of. And I want that person to be you.”

“Oh. I just thought… I just thought because you had all of those other people that you wouldn’t need me?” _Oh Thra, that was a stupid thought. Why didn’t I realize it was a stupid thought?_ “I didn’t think about…” 

“There's more," Naia interrupted. “It’s not... it’s not easy for a relationship to work when you’re a maudra. My parents’ relationship worked because my dad knew when to call my mother out and when to support her, and because my mom always respected his advice, even if she disagreed in the end. I think... I think we’ve been able to pull off those things a couple of times, and I think we can get even better at it in the future.”

_What is she asking?_

“So that’s it,” she said, letting go of his hands. “That’s everything. So just think about it and let me know what you want to do, but I have to leave at dawn.” 

Naia rose from her chair abruptly, but Amri grabbed her hand from across the table. He tried to organize his words as fast as he could, but it still took a couple of moments, long enough that Naia sat back down again. 

At last he spoke. “Remember when we were in the wasteland, and we saw Lore and Deet below, and we kind of had to glide down the cliffside one landing at a time? And the last drop was a little rough, but we made it?"

“Yeah?” 

“Well, I think I’m ready to jump off of this cliff with you. I just might need to stop on a few landings on the way down.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice wavering a little bit.

“And the first landing is me going back home with you and holding you when you fall apart.” 

The tears that she had been struggling to hold back fell faster and faster. “How about now a little bit?” she asked.

“I would love to,” said Amri with a smile, “but first I have to deal with this stupid table that’s coming between us.” He stood and, with great effort, pushed the table aside, and knelt in front of her chair.

She laughed through her tears as she slid down into his arms. “You could have just walked around.”

“But then I couldn't use my brilliant strategy of doing something stupid to get you to laugh.”

“Oh Thra, it really always works.”

“Good, because it’s my one trick. If you really want to keep me around long-term…” But before he could finish his sentence her lips were on his and he decided that the rest of the sentence wasn’t important. He wrapped one hand around her waist and another in her hair and neither said anything for a while.

They broke apart and spent several quiet breaths together. It was a calm moment at the end of a very hectic, very difficult day. But in the safety of the moment, Amri’s mind began to drift to unsafe places. To that existential dread of being drained. To the fear that it might happen to so many other Gelfling before the Crystal was healed. That they would never even know for certain whether the Crystal was healed. That there was no chance he could ever go home to Domrak or the Tomb of Relics, that his last moment in the sheltering caverns of Grot would be the one he and Naia spent fleeing from the Garthim.

Amri buried his face in Naia’s hair. “I might need to fall apart too,” he whispered. “On occasion.”

“Good,” she said, tightening her arms around him. “I’ll take care of you.”

“Do you think we’ll make it?” he asked. “The Gelfling?”

“Yes,” said Naia. “I’m going to spend every last moment of my life making sure that we do.” 

For the first time since the Garthim attacked that day, Amri felt relief. The Gelfling might be standing on a precipice, and they might end up bumped and bruised, but if Naia said that they would make it to the bottom alive, he believed that they would.

******

Seladon sat on the same bench on which she had found herself several weeks ago, gazing at the inscribed markings on Maudra Fara's tomb, the words and symbols illuminated in the starlight. Between the lack of moons in the sky and her unfamiliarity with the stars this far south from Ha’rar, she had no idea how much time had passed since the ritual had ended, or how long it would be until dawn.

She had meant to return to the other maudras after her encounter with the Ascendancy, but she had found herself wandering back here instead. As much as her mind recognized the reasons for hope that Onica had listed earlier, her heart was having a hard time feeling it. 

“What does it say?” Seladon looked up to see Rian, his gaze fixed on the inscriptions on the tomb. 

“Maudra Fara, the Rock Singer, perished in battle against the Skeksis oppressors.”

“Accurate, I guess," he said with a sad smile. 

“Are the others waiting for me?”

“Yes, Naia just got here, so you’re the last one we need.” 

Seladon nodded. She almost stood, when an idea came to her. “Why don't we have the meeting here?”

Rian placed his fingers on the inscribed letters. She knew he couldn’t read them, but he had somehow found her name. _Fara._ “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” he said. He dropped his hand and went off to gather the others. 

A few moments later, the assembly of maudras had gathered together in front of the tomb. Of the lot of them, only Mera and Argot had more than thirty trine. Ethri had been madura for less than a year, Seladon for less than a month, Naia for less than a day. And Fara was still dead. Seladon almost laughed aloud thinking of the version of herself from a month ago who had refused to believe that everything was about to change forever. 

“All right,” said Seladon. “The Crystal of Truth rejected the shard when we tried to heal it. We have since asked the Crystal of Truth _how_ it is to be healed, and we have an answer. It seems as if we must wait until the next Great Conjunction before the task is done. So that’s our first issue. How do we Gelfling survive until then?”

“We can keep the refugees that we have in Sog,” said Naia. “As many as want to stay. The Skeksis have never been able to penetrate the swamp. The Garthim can’t swim, and even if they learn how, I doubt they’ll ever be able to climb trees. If we keep to the apewood canopy we can fend them off for a long time.”

“The offer of Wellspring still stands,” said Seethi. “And there are caverns, tunnels in the Claw Mountains that we have never explored fully.”

“If there are caves, Grottan can help,” said Argot. “We can find good places, not just for Gelfling to hide in, but for Gelfling to live in.”

“Is it safe?” asked Naia. “A Garthim managed to invade Grot.”

“Completely different mountains,” said Maudra Argot. “The Claws are younger, stronger, made of harder rock. Difficult to penetrate with brute force. No holes bored into them by generations of Arathim either. Not to mention all of the snow and ice. It is promising.”

“All-Maudra,” said Ethri. “I’ve had a bit of news that we should probably factor into our plans.” 

_Oh Thra, please let it be good news._ “What is it, Ethri?”

“Today in battle against the Garthim, urSan the Swimmer came to the aid of Mother Aughra to neutralize the Garthim,” Ethri said. “During the battle, Sifa scouts also discovered skekSa the Mariner lurking by the river.”

Seladon’s stomach dropped. From her brief episode spying on skekSa, she knew that the Skeksis Mariner was one of the more competent, and therefore more dangerous, of the bunch. “And?” she asked.

“The scouts kept watch on skekSa until the battle ended. At which point skekSa the Mariner and urSan the Swimmer departed… together.” 

“Together?” asked Seladon. There was a trace of hope in the word. “Are you sure?”

“Together,” said Ethri with a grin. “On the Mariner’s riverboat, headed towards the sea.”

“If skekSa is travelling willingly with her urRu half,” said Seladon, “then that means…”

“… that the Mariner is probably not going to bother us anymore,” said Rian. “Not if she wishes to stay with urSan.”

“We have the seas,” said Seladon. _We have the seas._ It was the best news they’d had since the prophecy. “What’s out there?” asked Seladon. “Is there somewhere we can go?”

“There are a scattering of small islands off the coast of Cera-Na that should be out of the reach of the Skeksis, now that they have no Mariner. Probably not enough to support more than the Sifa and maybe a small number of refugees. But the Lord Mariner has been the center of Sifan seafaring for all of living memory and beyond. We’ve relied on her knowledge of the seas exclusively. There’s no knowing what she kept from us. At least not until we set out and explore for ourselves.” 

“We have some maps of the Southern Sea,” said Naia. “The Drenchen don’t sail, but we’ve explored a limited way along the southern coast in kayaks. If the Sifa send some ships down we can work together to explore southward as well. And we can explore the eastern coast. No one has explored all of the eastern waste, we may find somewhere that will support a settlement.”

Seladon’s heart lightened at last. _We have a plan_ , she thought. _We have several plans. Real promise for the survival of the Gelfling._

“Are you listening to yourselves?” Maudra Mera’s voice pierced the conversation. “Trying to find a hiding hole in the mountains, pinning our hopes to mystical lands across the sea that may or may not exist. Once the Skeksis get wind of this prophecy, they will do everything they can to exterminate us. I'm not the only one who thinks so; the entire Arathim Ascendancy agrees. We've already let the Skeksis build up an army. We will not survive a hundred and eleven trine unless we rid Thra of the Skeksis before they rid Thra of us. There are eleven of them, if we leave out skekSa. We take them out, we heal the Crystal, and it’s done.”

“I disagree with Maudra Mera,” said Naia. Her voice was sharp, but she tempered it as she spoke her next words. “I understand the impulse. The Skeksis tortured and almost killed my brother. Their creature killed my mother. Everything would be easier if they just disappeared. But I've met the urRu. They're not just abstractions to me. If we kill the Skeksis, we will kill innocents. And I don't think that's who the Gelfling are supposed to be.”

“No one knows who the Gelfling are supposed to be," snapped Mera. “This is who we are now, and whoever we were supposed to be, the Skeksis and their predecessors took it from us a long time ago.”

“The Age of Innocence,” said Seethi in a low voice.

“What is it, Maudra Seethi?" Seladon asked. “Any new perspective on this problem would be most welcome.”

“A short while ago,” Seethi began, “Raunip came to visit me in the Crystal Sea. In return for guiding him to the memories of Gyr, he showed me how to access the memories of the dead from the Age of Innocence. Visions of what the Gelfling used to be. Of what we can become again.”

“I know little of the Dousan ways of viewing the memories of the dead,” said Seladon. “Can you guide us to them, the way you guided Brother Raunip to Gyr’s memories?”

Seethi shook her head. “The ghost-dream is difficult to achieve with so many participants. If we had another anchor, someone else who had seen the memories of the dead from so long ago. But I think I am the only one.”

“Maybe not,” said Naia, realization coming into her eyes. “When Amri dreamfasted with the unblemished crystal vein, he found its song, but he also had these flashes of Gelfling from another age. We couldn’t figure out when exactly these memories came from, but in them there was no Castle of the Crystal. In its place was just… raw mountainside, I guess. Although Amri said that in the memories he could sense the Crystal of Truth buried deep within it.”

“I can't say what happened when your friend connected to the crystal vein,” said Seethi, “but it’s worth a try, to use him as a second anchor. I’ll have my people bring the supplies I need.” 

A short while later, five maudras, one soldier, and one former cave-dwelling peasant stood on the points of a seven-pointed star, their hands raised for a dreamfast, while Seethi, in the middle, entered the ghost-dream trance. On Seethi's cue, the other Gelfling entered the dreamfast, and the moonless night in Stone-in-the-Wood disappeared into a burst of light.

Seladon gazed upon the greenness of Thra thousands of trine past, and the greenness filled her heart and changed it. 

_It’s so simple_ , she thought, watching the Gelfling of the Age of Innocence explore the world around them. Under Mother Aughra’s tutelage, they encouraged the flora and fauna of Thra to grow and flourish, guiding them through the cycle of life, decay, rebirth. They carved homes out of trees, stones, hillsides, made paper from river reeds and dream-etched their memories and ideas and stories and played music by the hearth at night. _We had knowledge, culture, art. And we had it before the so-called Lords of the Crystal appeared on Thra._

It was true, the Gelfling of the Age of Innocence lacked some knowledge that Gelfling of the current age possessed, of medicine, of architecture, of mathematics. But that knowledge could have been attained in due course, over two thousand trine of development, on their own. It need not have come from the urSkeks or the Skeksis. 

And things had been lost. The Gelfling of the past had used their dream-arts to connect to the Crystal of Truth. _Why did we allowed the Skeksis, and the urSkeks before them, to keep us from the Crystal for so long?_

Even more—among the Gelfling of the past there had been no lords, no princesses, no clans. None of the divisions that they knew now. The Gelfling did fall into groups, clusters of nomads or small towns, but Gelfling from all across the Skarith Land would meet in festivals, fairs, in trade. They drew no sharp boundaries amongst themselves. And they were all one Gelfling—and they managed to be one Gelfling without an All-Maudra to rule over them.

Seladon saw simple weapons, bows and arrows and bolas, used in the hunt, and at the end of every hunt, a ceremony for the creature of Thra that died to provide life for others. But no weapon was ever pointed against another Gelfling or another wise creature: never at a Podling, or Arathim, or Gruenak, who flourished in the caverns to the east. Each wise creature of Thra had plenty, and shared when there was less than plenty. And when times were truly hard, the Gelfling let themselves pass back into Thra rather than raise a hand to take from others by force.

The vision circled back and once again Seladon stood in a green forest filled with the light of three suns, filtered through the Crystal of Truth, which floated free and unbounded above their world, the beating heart of Thra above a thousand Gelfling hearts beating below. A vision in a thousand lines of light, connecting what was in the past to what could be one day.

The dreamfast ended. The difference between the brilliance of the Crystal of Truth in the vision and the darkness of the moonless night was so great as to be blinding.

“Well,” said Seladon. “That was a much different world.”

“It’s not ours,” said Mera. “They took it from us.”

“We’re not going to get it back with violence,” Naia said. “The blight…”

“It doesn’t matter if we spread the blight,” Mera said. “Once the Crystal is healed the blight will disappear.”

“Maybe,” said Rian. “The Crystal rejected the shard once. Maybe it will reject it again. If we’re not worthy.”

“We have a better way than killing the Skeksis,” said Seladon. “We’ll study what answers the Crystal etched into the walls of Stone-in-the-Wood this night. We will fortify ourselves in the desert, in the swamp, across the sea if we can. We will hide ourselves away in this world that is ours, this world that we should know better than we do. This is our chance to heal our relationship with Thra. We will not punish our home with more bloodshed.”

“If we die,” said Seethi, “we should die as ourselves. As who we were and who we should be.”

“We’re not going to die,” said Naia. “We’re going to survive for a hundred and eleven trine. And then we will heal the urSkeks and heal Thra at once.”

Mera opened her mouth to snap a response before closing it in a sigh. “If the rest of you are fine with this decision,” she said after a pause, “then I will abide by it. For now. I cannot say that I will not change my mind in the future. Unless the All-Maudra orders otherwise.”

“No. I don't," said Seladon, surprised at how easily the words fell from her lips. "I have no more orders. We don’t need an All-Maudra. The All-Maudra was ever in the service of the Skeksis, not the Gelfling. And we will no longer serve the Skeksis.” 

_And we will no longer serve the Skeksis_. Seladon almost laughed at her own words. She still was not completely certain how to be a maudra, and probably never would be. And probably that was for the best; certainty had gotten her in trouble before. But she was far from the utterly lost woman who had sat in front of Fara’s tomb in confusion a few weeks ago. 

“I will lead the Vapra," she said. “And I will be happy to work alongside all of you for as long as we have the chance.” Leaving behind the All-Maudra was, in the quest of the Gelfling to rediscover themselves, one small step, but a small step in the right direction. A step towards the Crystal of Truth shining clear and free over a flowering Thra.

******

Rian could not see enough of the sky through the treetops to figure out the position of the stars and therefore how long ago the meeting of maudras had begun, but it seemed like hours since the ritual, the twice-dream, and the blue flames had erupted throughout Stone-in-the-Wood. He knew he should be paying attention, but he was tired, and his eyes kept wandering to the different parts of his old home, triggering hundreds of small memories.

The knowledge was still sinking in, but whatever hope he had for spending his future in Stone-in-the-Wood was now gone. These would be the last few hours that he had to commit his ancestral home to memory. The intricate metalwork on the lamps, the way each door was framed by a carefully laid arch of stone, the moss on the flagstones leading up to the inn… he must have noticed them all before, but he saw them now as if for the first time. _How will I ever remember it all?_

“Rian, what will you do?”

Six women looked at him expectantly, but he had no idea what they had been talking about. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What will I do about what?”

“Seethi, Ethri, Argot and I will be in the north,” said Seladon. “And Naia and Mera in the south. What about you?”

“Me? I’m going back to Sog.”

“The Stonewood, Rian,” said Naia. He could tell from her eyes that she was internally laughing at his cluelessness. “Where will the Stonewood go?”

“Oh,” he said. _Why is this my decision?_ “I guess if Naia and Seladon will have us, the refugees in Great Smerth and Ha’rar will make their homes there permanently.”

“Will the Elders be okay with that?” asked Seladon.

“They’ll have to be,” said Rian, already dreading the conversation he would have to have with them when he got back to Great Smerth. “What other choice do we have? Our home is… no longer our home.”

“We’re beginning the evacuation of Ha’rar in earnest as soon as we get back,” said Seladon. “We can give the Stonewood there the choice of Wellspring, or to sail down to Sog.”

“We can take some too,” said Ethri. “If they can handle the sea. But if we’re going to take in more than just a small number of refugees, we’ll have to find new lands.”

“Naia,” said Seladon, “I know you have to leave soon. But before you go, could you try to coordinate with Ethri about sending ships down to explore the South Sea as well? And about whether we can set up a regular sailing route between the north and south. We’ll need that more than ever with fewer Arathim to help us communicate across long distances.”

“I should have time,” Naia responded. “I’ll have my brother join the conversation too, he’s weirdly taken to sailing.”

Although the conversation had drifted away from him—he was certainly not going to be involved in any sea expeditions—Rian found himself strangely comforted by the turn it had taken. He might not get to stay in Stone-in-the-Wood, and Thra knew if this new prophecy was a blessing or a curse, but after their vision of the Age of Innocence, and as the maudras reached across clan lines as if they had never existed, Rian could see the unified future of the Gelfling that he and Deet had envisioned coming into focus, like the small details of the forest reappearing with the evaporation of the morning fog. 

“Hello ladies.” A sudden voice came out of the dark night. 

Rian refocused and looked around for the speaker, and in due time, Mother Aughra ambled out of the darkness of the woods and into their circle by Maudra Fara’s tomb. “And also one man,” Mother Aughra said, pausing to notice Rian. 

Aughra seated herself heavily on the bench before speaking again. “You people are in charge around here, right?”

She looked around at them for a few moments until Seladon replied with a tentative, “Yes?” 

“Of course, of course, seven maudras for seven clans,” said Mother Aughra, pointing a finger at each of them. “Or six maudras and one man.” Aughra retracted her finger and fixed her eye on Rian. “That’s new, right?”

“Yes,” said Rian. “I’m new. But I’m not in charge of anything.”

“Yes, you are,” said Naia before anyone could protest. “I’m appointing you as my official liaison to the Stonewood in Sog.” Rian saw Maudra Mera scowl from across the circle.

 _Oh Thra, if I agree to this, I’m going to have to be the buffer between whatever is going on with the two of them._ “Fine,” he said. “I guess I’m in charge of the Stonewood contingent in Sog.”

“Mother Aughra,” said Seladon, “I heard from the others how you and urSan came to our rescue today. We are in debt to you for wiping out so many Garthim.”

“Meh. Nothing to it,” Aughra responded. “Might’ve slipped a mental gear in the process, but the whole machine’s never shut down before so let’s not worry about that now.”

Rian felt like perhaps slipping a mental gear was something that one should worry about, but he was not an immortal woods-witch, and he was also very tired, so he kept quiet. But the part of his mind that recorded strategy made a tentative note that they might not be able to rely on Mother Aughra to neutralize the Garthim threat forever.

“Mother Aughra,” said Naia. “You managed to pull those Garthim apart. Were you able to figure out more about them? Do you think it spreads the blight when will kill them, the way it works with other creatures?”

“Learned a couple of things, yes. Not sure if they’re good things, but not as bad as they could be. As for the blight, yes and no. The Garthim are powered by the Darkening, and when the they die, the Darkened energy within them leaks into Thra and blights the land. But the Darkened energy that the Skeksis channel into the beasts during their creation would have just spread into the land anyway. It’s all just shuffled around.” Aughra nodded once firmly, as if in agreement with herself, and then sat silently on the bench, looking around at the dream-etchings that now covered the stones beneath her feet.

“And?” asked Rian after the pause had extended for a few moments.

“And what?” said Aughra.

“You said that you learned a couple of things.”

Aughra pointed a finger at him again. “Right,” she said. “The second thing. That old bird the Scientist has overstepped himself. Too many copies.”

“What?”

“Too many copies, too fast. The older generations of Garthim, when they move they are slower, and when you strike them they are easier to kill. But they were much harder for me to pull apart. The younger generations are faster, hardier, but when I reached into the Song to unbraid their parts, they practically fell apart at the first tug. Too much too fast. The copies will start falling apart on their own after a few more generations. Those murderous old birds should’ve saved a Gruenak or two, if they wanted to make so many.”

“You’re saying that they won’t be able to make new ones forever?” asked Seladon. 

“Not saying that. I know the Scientist. He reeks of ingenuity. He’ll find a way. But he’ll be slowed down for a while. It will buy you some time.”

“We’ll need it,” said Rian. “If that prophecy means what we think it means.”

Aughra turned towards the palace and let her eye wander over the dream-etched walls of Stone-in-the-Wood. “Yes, quite the prophecy you got for yourselves,” she said. “You did very well.”

Rian thought back over all that had happened since his failed attempt to heal the Crystal. With the shock of the prophecy’s content, he’d had little time to reflect on the fact that they’d actually succeeded, how they now knew so much more than they had when he had first taken a blind stab at the Crystal a month ago. And how it had taken seven circles of seven Gelfling across seven clan lines to achieve it. 

In his mind, more details came into focus of a future where the Gelfling were unified, so real that he almost thought he could see it: Gelfling children running through Stone-in-the-Wood, hair dark like the Stonewood and Spriton and Dousan, silver like the Vapra and the Grottan, red like the Sifa, in braids like the Drenchen. The symbols on their clothes recalled the sigils of the seven clans, but reinterpreted, elaborated, featuring patterns with multiple sigils locked together.

“We’re still in the process of recording everything so that we can interpret it properly,” said Seladon, shaking Rian out of his daydream. _Or… was that a vision?_ Rian had never thought of himself as the vision type, but it had been a long day, and he had joined in two mystical Dousan dreamfasts already that night, so who knew at this point.

“Once you’re done writing it down, try to send me a copy,” said Aughra. “I do love a good prophecy. And I’m always collecting these sorts of things amongst my records in the observatory.”

The strategic part of Rian’s mind noted that sending Aughra a copy of the prophecy would be a good idea. The Skeksis, for whatever reason, had little power over Mother Aughra, and keeping a copy of the prophecy with her would ensure its safety. Which gave him another idea.

“Mother Aughra,” said Rian. “What would you say if we asked you to keep the crystal shard safe for us?”

“Me?” 

“Your home is closer to the castle than either Wellspring or Great Smerth. And we don’t know what the world will be like in a hundred and eleven trine, but…”

Rian could see on her face that her thoughts had cleared from their earlier agitation and her mind was now working as it should. Which explained the tinge of sadness in her voice when she finished his thought. 

“…but I am the only one in this circle who will still be here. Probably. Maybe.” She looked Rian directly in the eye, and he saw the workings of their minds come to the same conclusion. _If she is going to stay sharp-minded enough to safekeep the shard, she will not be able to push herself past her limits fighting the Garthim._

“There is a logic to it,” said Seladon. “The Gelfling may survive that far in the future, but we don’t know for sure where we’ll be. But Mother Aughra will be in the same place. Right?”

“Mmm,” she said. “I can rattle around in that old observatory for a century or so. Done it before. I’ll get the shard to the Gelfling when the time comes. I am sorry you lot won’t be here to see it though.”

There was still no sign of dawn when Mother Aughra, newly-entrusted with the shard, departed with some unknown purpose back into the dark woods. 

The meeting broke up shortly after. Rian looked once more around the hearth of Stone-in-the-Wood, at the Crucible, which would, indeed, go dark again. He gazed upon the palace, where a group of Gelfling were hard at work transcribing the prophecy. He prayed that the future it promised would come to pass, even if it took over a hundred trine, and that Stone-in-the-Wood would be filled with the laughing children of his vision.

And with that wish for a future that did not belong to him, he went off to look for one that did.

******

In the moonless night, the survivors of the Third Battle of Stone-in-the-Wood prepared for a few hours of rest before scattering, perhaps finally, to points north or south. Unlike the last battle, there were no elaborate camps dedicated to each clan, but makeshift ones, tents scattered around the plaza and palace, rooms in the inn claimed by whoever found them first.

“How’s your drink, Hup?” asked Deet, as she lifted her newly-filled mug.

“Flat,” he said, making a face at the taste.

Deet took a sip of her ale and it was, indeed, terrible. 

“Well, the barrel has been sitting here open for a month,” she said. 

Still, it felt very appropriate to be sitting here at this bar stool, where a month ago she and Hup had been bullied by a couple of Stonewood. “If only they could see us now,” she said. 

Hup laughed and blew a raspberry. “Jerks.”

Deet laughed for a second, and then put a hand over her mouth in horror. “Oh no, except they might be dead.”

“Nah,” said Hup. “Hup see in Ha’rar.”

Deet lowered her hand. “Oh, all right then.” Checking on whether or not your bullies had been horribly murdered before resenting them was a strange new aspect of the world that they found themselves in. She took another sip of her ale. Still terrible, but not as bad as the first sip had been.

“I could get used to this, maybe,” she said.

Hup threw back the whole mug. “This or nothing,” he said with a shrug. 

“What are you two drinking?” 

_Rian._ “Oh, just this ale that we found.”

Rian looked into the barrel. “Deet, has this been open since the evacuation? There are _crawlies_ swimming in there. And they’re still alive.”

“Well, we didn’t have much of a choice,” said Deet, peeking in the barrel. She plucked out one of the crawlies. “This is a nira beetle, you can eat them. They’re very nutritious.”

Hup hopped down off his stool and patted Rian on the arm. “Hup go help cook.” He nodded towards the plaza where a handful of soldiers had brought out a few large cauldrons to feed the exhausted survivors of the battle. “Good luck, brother.”

Deet picked up her cup and Hup’s and rinsed them out at the water pump. She was about to ask Rian how his meeting went, when she felt his arms wrap around her waist and pull her close. 

_Quick, think of something romantic to say._

“How did your meeting go?” she asked. _Nope._

“It’s over,” he said. “Everything that started that day at the castle. It’s finally over.”

 _It’s over._ She turned around in his arms so that she was facing him. “You must be very tired.”

He put his forehead to hers. “I just want to kiss you and then go live with you in a swamp for the rest of my life.”

“Okay,” she replied.

Fortune smiled on them and allowed them a few moments to themselves before they were startled by a crash to their left.

“Oh hello, you two,” Brea said, pulling herself up with her crutch. “I was just cataloguing the inscriptions and I’m on grid block A-19, but I definitely do not want to interrupt what was just happening here, so I’ll just move on to B-01 and come back…”

“Thra alive, Brea,” said Rian, “what happened to you?” 

“Oh,” said Brea, looking down at her tattered, blood-splattered clothes. “I stabbed a couple of Garthim, and one of them ran me over and I nearly lost a leg apparently? Deet was there for that.”

“I was,” said Deet, to a still-shocked Rian.

“And then I fell in the mud a couple of times, once due to physical shock because of the leg thing, and once due to, like, _emotional_ shock I guess, and the dress is all patched up because... well you were there for that time on the boat… and… I think that's everything?”

“Are you all right?” asked Deet.

“I don’t know,” Brea responded, her eyes wandering back to the inscriptions. “But I am very distracted.”

“What about when the distractions are gone?” asked Deet.

“Look at all this,” said Brea, gesturing around at the inscriptions that covered Stone-in-the-Wood. “The distractions will never be gone.”

“Enough to last over a hundred trine?” asked Rian.

“I know you’re being sardonic Rian, but, yes,” said Brea. “And it may not even be necessary to wait that long.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’ve already brainstormed many possibilities,” she said. “Although we won’t really be able to explore them all until we finish transcribing everything. Right now what I’m toying with is whether we can use the next Minor Conjunction to…”

“The next what?” asked Rian.

“A Minor Conjunction. Two suns aligning instead of three. How do you not know this?”

“I didn’t know it either,” said Deet.

“Yes, but you have an excuse; you didn’t even know that suns existed until a month ago.”

“That’s true,” said Deet, turning to Rian. “I have an excuse.” The pout on his face was rather cute. 

Brea continued. “The main prophecy in the palace refers to the next _Great_ Conjunction, but there’s a _Minor_ Conjunction within our lifetimes. If the power of the Gelfling ritual and the shard today were enough to reunite an urSkek and send them back home, then I was thinking a Minor Conjunction at least…”

“But Brea,” said Deet. “Brother Raunip was the one who made the bridge between worlds. He could do it because he’s partly of the stars.”

“Ah,” said Brea. “I didn’t even ask about him, is he…?”

Deet turned her eyes up to the patches of star-filled night sky that broke through the forest canopy. “He… he was already near the end of his life when he took the Darkening from me,” she said. “Lore carried him off into the woods, but… I don’t think we’ll see them again.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Brea. She reached out to hug Deet, but stumbled into her arms instead. Deet managed to catch her and shifted her weight so that the other woman was leaning on her shoulder.

Deet felt Brea lean into their embrace. “Rian, come here I am very sad and I want you to also be in this hug.” Brea opened her right arm wide and Rian joined them, his pout turning into a smile. After a moment, they broke the embrace, and Deet helped Brea onto one of the stools.

“But,” said Brea after about half a second of quiet. “The question is _how_ Brother Raunip was of the stars.” Deet smiled to herself at her friend’s inability to break away from a chain of thought once she got started. 

“He was made from a bit of star-rock that fell to Thra,” Brea continued. “So if we can just find that kind of rock….” She began flipping hastily through her notebook. “Look at what I found on Grid Block A-9. There’s an image of a kind of flame through the night sky falling towards the ground. So if we can find where it landed…”

“Then what?” asked Rian. “What are we going to do with a star-rock?”

“I don’t know _yet_ ,” said Brea. “Rian, you are so bad at brainstorming. But look at all of these inscriptions. There has to be information here that we can use. The Crystal wouldn’t have given all of this to us for no reason.”

“Do you really think you can find another way?” asked Deet. What would she do if they managed to heal Thra within her lifetime? Go back to Domrak? But she had liked that idea of living with Rian in the swamp for the rest of her life too. 

“I don’t know if it’s possible to find another way,” said Brea. “But I’m certainly going to spend the rest of my life trying.”

 _A hundred and eleven trine._ “I wish you could come with us,” Deet said.

“Me too. But Seladon needs me in Ha’rar. We’ll probably have to start evacuating as soon as we get back.”

“I’m sorry you’ll lose your home,” said Rian. 

“Well, I’m no different from the two of you in that regard. But you probably don’t want to think about it right now, Rian.” 

“It’s all right,” he said. “I have hope that Gelfling will live here again, whether it’s in a hundred trine or sooner, if the brainstorming works out. And I have hope… this might sound a little ahead of the game, but if you look at our friends not a single person’s paired up with a member of the same clan. So I hope in the future, maybe we’ll still remember our clans or not, but no matter what, we’ll think of ourselves as Gelfling first.”

“That’s a nice thought,” said Deet.

“Well, you certainly won’t hear any arguments from me,” said Brea. 

“But that’s the future,” said Rian with a sigh. “Until then it looks like I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to keep the peace between Naia and Maudra Mera.”

“Surely it won’t be that bad,” said Brea. “Maudra Mera is old enough to be your grandmother. You’ll almost certainly outlive her.”

“What am I going to do without you around to explain things to me?” he asked.

“I’m actually a little bit concerned about that,” said Brea. “But I’m sure Deet will do a decent job of it.”

“I’ll still miss you,” said Rian. “What if we never see each other again?”

“I don’t know,” said Brea. “See, I don’t have explanations for everything.” 

“I’m doing my best to have hope for the future,” said Rian, “but sometimes it does feel like we’re trying to stave off the end of the world.”

“It’s not the end of the world,” said Deet. “We’re at the start of something amazing. The Gelfling are going to remake ourselves. We’re going to heal Thra. The future is wide open.”

“See?” said Rian. “She’s explaining things to me already.”

Brea laughed. “Deet, you’re the third person tonight to remind me to have hope. I’m going to try to take it to heart.”

“Was one of them the boy that you’re taking home with you?” Deet asked with a smile.

“Yes,” Brea said, with a smile that mirrored Deet’s. 

“Good. I’m glad there will be someone up there in the north to explain things to _you_ every now and then.”

Brea wiped a tear with her sleeve before standing, carefully this time. She gestured back towards the hearth. “I don’t know if you heard, but some of the soldiers are preparing—I guess not breakfast, it’s too early for that, but _pre_ -breakfast over by the Crucible. It should be ready within an hour. Until then, I’ll leave you two to get back to what you were doing.” 

She gave them a smile and started hobbling off, before turning back once more. “I _will_ have to circle back to A-19 at some point, though,” she said, gesturing to a nearby block of stone, “so you may want to find somewhere else to do it.”

“Well,” said Deet, once Brea had gone, “do you want to find somewh—“

Before she could finish, Rian grabbed her hand, and started pulling her gently towards the road. “Yes,” he said. “And since we’re still in my hometown for one last night, I know plenty of suitable somewhere elses.”

******

Aughra, the first and last of her name, was nearly run over by the two young Gelfling dashing off together, hand-in-hand towards an abandoned watchtower. _An old story, but a sweet one._ One that tended to crop up at the end of wars. The two Gelfling who had just laughed their way past her had probably themselves come about at the end of the Arathim War.

It remained to be seen, however, how much hope the Gelfling would have after this last battle, after the prophecy. If any of these new young lovers chose to enter into parenthood, it would be with hearts that were more informed by the heaviness of bringing a child into the world than the joy. 

_Well enough, I suppose._ There would always be heaviness along with the joy, best get used to it as soon as possible. For Aughra, now was the time for the former.

She passed through the empty outskirts of Stone-in-the-Wood and then treaded into the Endless Forest at night, precious little starlight making its way through the sparse holes in the leaf-lined ceiling. Yet Aughra had her own ways of sensing a path through the darkness, and of sensing the location of her target who had, alas, finally stopped moving long enough for her to catch up with him.

In a small grove beneath a garland of leafy treetops that encircled a sky filled with stars, a strange formation of rock and gnarled wood breathed, ever so slightly, in the low-lit night. 

“You found me.” His voice was a wheeze, the quietest of breezes. He lay prone on the back of the now-sleeping rock-giant Lore, unable to move a muscle.

“My dear little one,” she said, laying her walking stick on the earth as she kneeled beside him. “What’s happened to you?”

“The blight,” he said. “I first noticed it about thrice-seven trine past. Earlier this month it became unbearable and I knew I would not last much longer.”

“When they started draining the Gelfling,” Aughra said. “That must be what accelerated it.” _But why does it affect him so much more than it affects me?_

“Is that why you took all that Darkened energy from the Gelfling girl?” she asked. “Because you knew you only had a short time left?” 

“Might as well…” He paused for more air. “…have one less blighted creature running around Thra.” _Ah, he loves them so much._

“You must forgive your foolish mother,” she said, laying a hand upon his back. It was still warm. “I’ve been wandering around the Skarith Land for weeks trying to figure out what’s going on with these visions and symbols and the shard that appeared out of nowhere. But it was you all along. You set this whole thing into motion.”

He closed his eyes, but his breath still came steady beneath her hand. “Are you proud?” he managed to breathe out at last.

“How could I not be proud of you?” she said, leaning closer to him. “You have surpassed me.”

“I heard that you died and came back to protect the Gelfling from the Skeksis,” he said. 

“And you…” she began. Aughra was very old and had seen the cycle of life more times than there were stars in the sky, but it was still hard to finish the sentence. “You will have died doing what you always dreamed of. You sent an urSkek home.”

“Only one. The rest is up to the Gelfling.”

Aughra moved closer to him, so that her words were quiet but still strong in his ear. “They are united,” she said. “They have the instructions. They have the shard. There is more hope than I could have ever imagined. And it’s all thanks to you.”

“I wish I could live to see the healing of Thra.” His voice was a whisper, but she could hear a tinge of remorse in it. Even so, she did not expect his next words. “But I don’t have the right.”

“What do you mean, don’t have the right?” she said, her hand firm on his back. Still warm.

“All those thousands of trine I resented the Skeksis and the urSkeks before them, for being interlopers in this world,” he said. “But what am I? I too came from the stars.”

“Nonsense.” Aughra sat up sharply, and her voice was no longer gentle but loud and firm. “You are of Thra as much as you are of the stars.”

“Only the part you lent to me. And now that part is rotting away. Thra has rejected me.”

 _Even to the end, I have to set this boy straight._ “I won’t listen to such things,” she said. “The problem with the urSkeks isn't that they're from the stars. The problem is they never truly _loved_ Thra or its creatures. Thought themselves superior to all this. To all of us. Took charge of our Crystal from the get-go, without even a by-your-leave from a wise creature of Thra. Assumed it was their right to 'civilize' us without stopping to think that we might have our own civilization already. In their pride and in their greed they forced their will upon us. Those are their sins. Not where they’re from.”

“But I…”

“You are of Thra, Raunip. My son. All of you. Because from the start you have loved Thra and all of its creatures, speechless and wise. Your last act, a sacrifice to save a young Gelfling, and you think that you are not of Thra. Bah.”

“Mother…” He didn’t finish, but for now he still breathed.

“It’s my fault,” she said, after a few moments. She knew everything that she had said to him that night was true, and now her mind tied it all together. “I was brought into being to manage the life of Thra. Not to create it. Out of my own selfishness I formed you. But I was not meant to be a creator. I made a mistake. I tied you too closely tied to the creatures of Thra. I knew no better. That is why you suffer so greatly with them now.”

They sat in silence for several moments. Aughra stared up at the stars, her old friends. _What a foolish old woman. My curiosity gets the better of me. I get lost in stars and neglect Thra. I find a piece of the stars on Thra and ask myself what happens if I create a life with it, but I am too careless in the details. My big dreams, nothing but trouble._

Aughra was so lost in her self-recriminations that she was startled by the sudden low vibration beneath her hand as Raunip spoke. “I can never know what your motivation was in creating me,” he said. “But I see no selfishness in it. My life has been a great gift. I am glad to have lived it.”

When Aughra spoke, her voice was thick, like smoldering wood on a campfire. “Well, if you don’t regret it, then I won’t either.”

“Watch over them, Mother.”

“Don’t have any other plans.”

“And don’t forget yourself.”

“Can’t promise that. Might have to choose between that and fighting the Garthim. But I’ll try.”

He opened his eyes, the light of the stars reflected in their mismatched blue and yellow. “And stay with me for a little while longer,” he said.

“That I can promise you.” She wrapped her arm around his back and held him close.

Hours passed, starlight falling upon mother and child, until blue twilight shone on the horizon in anticipation of the Great Sun. The stars faded, the night ended, and the long dawn began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original _Dark Crystal_ movie has rattled around in the back of my mind since childhood, and somehow the TV show and the YA novels triggered this very long fanfiction 30+ years later. _Creation Myths_ and _The World of the Dark Crystal_ were big inspirations for this story as well. I am indebted to the creators of all of those works. 
> 
> We finally made it to the end of this thing! Thanks to everyone who read along until the end!


End file.
